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New tool to support registrants in improving dossier quality now available

New tool to support registrants in improving dossier quality now available

ECHA/NA/13/05
News alert
Media enquiries: ECHA Press

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has launched the Dossier Quality Assistant to help registrants detect potential inconsistencies in their registration dossiers. Registrants are recommended to make use of the tool to proactively update dossiers or check new dossiers before submission to the Agency in order to improve the quality of REACH registrations.

Helsinki, 11 February 2013 – The Dossier Quality Assistant is an additional tool incorporated in the new version (5.4.3) of the Technical Completeness Check (TCC) plug-in for IUCLID 5. It does not introduce any changes to the current TCC rules or affect the outcome of the Technical Completeness Check performed by ECHA, but helps registrants identify potential shortcomings in their dossiers. Thereby, registrants not only may avoid to be prioritised for follow-up actions but can also be guided when they wish to proactively improve their dossier to respond to ECHA's call for better compliance and higher quality of registrations.

The tool has been developed to detect some of the most common inconsistencies the Agency has encountered in its dossier evaluation work and other screening activities. It runs automatically when the registrants launch the Technical Completeness Check on their dossiers and substance datasets in IUCLID 5. The results are shown in a new separate screen, where registrants can see the potential deficiencies detected by the tool. It also provides links to additional information on how companies can address the issues encountered as well as possible explanations as to why reported inconsistencies might be justifiable in rare situations. ECHA encourages registrants to study the results obtained from this Assistant and revise their dossiers before submitting their 2013 registrations.

The Dossier Quality Assistant covers areas such as substance identity, tonnage consistency and use description. It can, for example, be used to verify that registration dossiers according to Article 17 or 18 of the REACH Regulation only contain information on uses compatible with the definition of intermediates.

The Agency will continue to develop the Dossier Quality Assistant in the future when more results from dossier verification are available to provide registrants additional assistance in preparing high quality registration dossiers.