Q&A info

REACH applies to chemical substances and therefore only information about chemicals are disseminated on the ECHA webpage. It does not contain information about chemical preparations, formed by mixing different chemical substances, nor about articles containing chemicals.

In other words, you can find information about methanol or butane, but not for example about a shampoo, cleaning products or pencils.

Under the Waste Framework Directive (EU 2018/851), ECHA makes available information that suppliers submit on articles that contain substances of very high concern.

Most data disseminated on the ECHA website is retrieved from dossiers submitted by the industry. The Substance Infocards and Brief Profiles are automatically generated from the continually increasing quantity of chemical information submitted to ECHA. The quality and correctness of the information remains entirely the responsibility of the data submitter. ECHA is working with our stakeholders to improve the overall data quality.

The information submitted by the industry may or may not have been verified by ECHA. Under the evaluation processes, 20% of submitted dossiers are to be checked.
The information on chemicals subject to ECHA’s regulatory processes has been verified by the relevant experts before publication; this includes the Candidate list of SVHCs, the Authorisation list, and the list of substances restricted under REACH.

The following identifiers will produce search results.

Substance name

IUPAC names, CAS names, SMILE and InChI notation, trade names etc will produce results if present in submitted information and present on substance infocards.

EC number

The European Community number (numbers starting with 2, 3, 4 or 5) is a unique seven-digit identifier that was assigned to substances for regulatory purposes within the European Union by the European Commission or ECHA. You can find more information on these here.

List number

A List number (numbers starting with 6, 7, 8 or 9) is a technical identifier for managing submissions within ECHA. It is an automatically allocated number assigned by REACH-IT and therefore this number has no legal relevance as such.

CAS registry number

A CAS Registry Number, also referred to as CASRN or CAS Number, is a unique numerical identifier assigned by the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society. These numerical identifiers are present in the ECHA databases but are not assigned by or in the remit of ECHA.

Index number

Index numbers relating to harmonised classifications present in Annex VI of the CLP legislation. These can relate to specific substances or group entries covering an array of substances fitting a group definition.

HS CODE  

Harmonised System Code (e.g. 2903.89) used worldwide for customs and shipping

CN CODE  

Combined Nomenclature (CN) (e.g. 2852 00 00) is the EU's eight-digit coding system, comprising the HS codes with further EU subdivisions. It both serves the EU's common customs tariff and provides statistics for trade inside the EU and between the EU and the rest of the world.

HS CODE MIXTURE 

This is the HS code for a given substance when it’s a component of a mixture.