- August 4, 2019
- Posted by: admin
- Category: Blogs
ECHA releases new Poison Centre guidance and an updated submission portal
The updated version of the ECHA Poison Centre submission portal was released this week, along with an updated guidance document. This portal is an online tool to help businesses fulfill their obligations under Article 45 of the CLP Regulation, and the updated version provides better guidance and clarification on the obligations of duty holders.
On 22nd March 2017, this legislation introduced the requirement for EU member states to set up an “appointed body” or Poison Centre, that would receive data on hazardous mixtures in the marketplace. These poison centers use the supplied data to give physicians and consumers the appropriate advice for medical treatment for chemical poisoning. The current list of the member states poison centers can be found here.
Importers, distributors, and downstream users placing products on the market containing health and certain physical hazards need to provide information about the composition of the mixture, product category, size and type of packaging as well as whether the product will be used by consumers and / or industrial users. This requirement will apply to mixtures for consumer use from 1 January 2020. The regulation becomes mandatory to mixtures for professional use on 1 January 2021 and to mixtures for industrial use on 1 January 2024.
Businesses outside the EU that import into the EU also have a duty to submit this data to the appropriate Poison Centre for each member state where the product will be placed on the market.
The new submission portal will provide a more efficient solution to harmonize emergency health responses required for these mixtures. As the portal requires a specified format, appointed bodies will be able to easily to retrieve the relevant information. Once a mixture is submitted, a unique formula identifier “UFI” is provided that needs to be placed on the products label. This will allow poison centers to identify the composition of the mixture more accurately and therefore provide the appropriate medical treatment in the event of poisoning.
The new Guidance on harmonized information relating to emergency health response – Annex VIII to CLP document can be found at Link.