Collecting information on uses

 

In your registration dossier you also have to report / provide information on how your substance is used in your supply chain. To retrieve such information you can use many sources, for example:

  • Knowledge collected in your own company on your customer’s uses. You know the uses of the substance based on the market you supply. You may have already documented the uses in the safety data sheets you supply to your customers.

  • Direct contact with your customers (this is mainly relevant where you supply to a limited number of customers who are directly using the substance to make it react, or to incorporate it into an article).

  • Sector use maps available on ECHA’s website. This is mainly relevant where you supply to formulating sectors.  Use maps contain already compiled and agreed descriptions of typical uses for a given sector. Check the availability of sector use maps in the overview table.

If you do not supply a well-defined sector, and sell, for example, to distributors only, you have to reserve time to collect information on uses.

If you are joining an existing registration, check whether the uses of your supply chain are already appropriately described. If this is the case, adopt the same description.

Be aware of how you describe your uses, as this information is used by authorities e.g. to prioritise / de-prioritise substances for potential regulatory risk management actions.

You are advised to:

  • Cover only real uses relevant in your supply chain.
  • Include information on tonnage/use.
  • Collect and report as precise information as possible on specific uses including:
    • consumer uses;
    • uses in articles;
    • uses in limited number of sites only;
    • uses in rigorous containment;
    • intermediate uses;
    • food contact and cosmetics uses;

As well as describing uses in the registration dossier, if you register a substance at or above 10 tonnes per year, you need to describe the conditions of safe use in exposure scenarios, which are part of the chemical safety report.