The most important regulatory update in the last month has been on the Recommendations for inclusion in the authorization list as ECHA started public consulation on 18 new substances. Please note that this is the final step before substances are added to the REACH Authorization list. The deadline for comments is December 5, 2018, so if you find any substances of significance to you there, do not hesitate to let ECHA know.

As usual, there has been only very low volume of new REACH registrations in August. Typically in the lower tens per week.

Other regulatory updates

Even though it does not fall into August, we would like to remind you that a new amendment to Article 9 of the Waste Framework Directive has been in force since July 2018. This amendment requires all manufacturers and importers to notify ECHA of all SVHCs contained in the articles they produce or import.

As a more recent news ECHA today released results of a study into risk assessment of nano pigments. The study identified large gaps in the knowledge about this particular type of material and it is likely that new obligations will be made part of the REACH registration procedure in order to address this topic.

Big Watchdog update

As promissed in the last newsletter, we have deployed a brand new version of Watchdog which contains many significant changes. Most notably to you, we have separated the database of substances from the database of regulatory records, i. e. individual items of regulatory lists.

By this change, Watchdog will get much more flexible in handling group records and related records in general. And this means much more reliable detection and notification of changes for you.

What does this mean for me?

When you now use Watchdog, you will get into contact with two types of entities that would seem very similar - substances and regulatory records. The former one represents a substance from a controlled database of substances, the latter a verbatim copy of one record from a regulatory list. When possible, it is better to add substances to your watchlist because the regulatory records tend to be more "volatile" and change more often. Also, when you monitor a substance, you automatically monitor all existing and future regulatory records related to it (for example by having the same CAS or EC).

We did our best to migrate your "watchlist" from the old Watchdog to the new one. Where it was possible, we have added corresponding substances to your watchlist. Where no matching substance existed, we added the regulatory record itself onto your list. In any case, we guarantee that no information was lost and your alerts will work as before or better. Here is a link to your watchlist so that you can check nothing was lost.

Having concerns? Drop me an email at beda@ecomole.com, I am ready to address your concerns and help you if needed.

Conference invitation

We are pleased to invite you to the Prague Chemical Management Cruise which will take place in the heart of Europe, in marvelous Prague on 6–7 December 2018.

The conference will be dedicated to the most burning issues, like how to stay compliant with EU chemical legislation in 2019, what are the post-registration tasks, how to move chemical goods across the borders and stay compliant on the global level.

The attendees will be able to get "1^st-hand" information on the new trends in regulatory landscape, will benefit from the shared experience from the leading industries, will get insights from dossier compliance checks and main directions for REACH and CLP Enforcement in 2019.

With best regards from the Watchdog team

Beda @ EcoMole