Shipping Chemicals to Europe

Jan. 8, 2010 - PRLog -- Shipping to Europe?
New GHS requirements for classification and labelling will be in force soon.
The European Union’s (EU) Parliament adopted legislative reports
concerning GHS Regulations on classification, labelling and packaging
(CLP) of substances and mixtures, in their first reading agreement.
The EU’s GHS Regulations aims to maintain the current levels of protection, and to ensure a
smooth transition to a new system based on the UN’s Globally Harmonized System of
Classification and Labelling (GHS).
The EU’s CLP proposal will require the reclassification and labelling of most substances
by December 1, 2010, and June 1, 2015 for mixtures. Following entry into force of the
new EU CLP system, substances and mixtures must still be classified under the current
EU system of classification and labelling, however, may be voluntarily classified
according to the CLP system before the above dates.
There are unique transitional provisions that will be applied in the EU’s new CLP
Regulation. One such provision is that from December 1, 2010 until June 1, 2015,
substances will be required to be classified under both the current EU classification
system and the new CLP system, both classifications being required to be shown on the
Safety Data Sheet (SDS) in section 15.
Similar to the EU’s current system, the new CLP Regulation also establishes harmonized
lists classification and labelling of substances. The CLP Regulation has also established
‘translation tables’ to convert classifications under the current EU system into the new
CLP classification. The translation tables in the new CLP system will allow suppliers
and manufacturers to avoid having to reclassify all of the substances and mixtures that
they have already completed classifications for under the current EU system, thus
smoothing the transition into the new system.
The entry into force date of the new CLP Regulation is set at 20 days following
publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
For more information on the new EU CLP regulation, please feel free to contact the
Regulatory staff at ICC the Compliance Center, and we’ll be glad to assist you. In
addition, the European Commission has established the several webpages on their
website ( h t tp://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/reach/ghs_legislation_en.htm ) dealing with the
proposal and legislation news.

# # #

ICC The Compliance Center (ICC) is a provider of solutions for regulatory compliance in transportation and workplace safety, specializing in labeling, packaging, training, consulting, Dot Placards, Un packaging, GHS labeling, GHS, Iata publications, MSDS.