Companies must notify ECHA about certain Substances of Very High Concern in articles not later than 1 June 2011

Press Release

ECHA/PR/11/08
Media enquiries: ECHA Press

Producers and importers of articles (furniture, construction products, clothing etc) have a legal obligation to notify ECHA if any Substance of Very High Concern included in the Candidate List is present in their articles above the threshold of 0.1% weight by weight and if the quantity of such substance in those articles is over 1 tonne per producer/importer per year.

Helsinki, 13 April 2011 - The Candidate List is a list of substances that have been officially identified as being of very high concern due to their hazardous properties in relation to the environment and/or human health. Companies will have to notify ECHA of the presence of such a substance in their articles not later than 6 months after the inclusion of such a substance in the Candidate List. For those substances included in the Candidate List by 1 December 2010, the relevant notifications have to be submitted not later than 1 June 2011.

To support companies in complying with their obligations, ECHA has today updated REACH-IT to allow the submission of notifications for substances in articles. In order to explain the actual submission process a new Data Submission Manual for substances in articles has been developed. This manual is available on a new web page on the notification of substances in articles. Interested parties can find more information on this REACH process on ECHA web site. To facilitate the submission of the information required to complete a notification, ECHA is making available pre-filled substance datasets in IUCLID 5.3 format for all substances on the Candidate List. These datasets contain information on substance identification, classification and labelling and they can be downloaded from the Candidate List webpage.