On January 23, 2018, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) informed that it has selected 236 substances in its annual screening exercise for examination by Member State (MS) competent authorities. The IT-based screening approach creates groups “around substances with suspected or known concerns, such as those on the Community rolling action plan (CoRAP) for substance evaluation or on the Candidate List of substances of very high concern (SVHCs),” ECHA explained. “Read-across arguments and categories available in registration dossiers or categories used in other regulatory programs (e.g. OECD), as well as structural similarity,” are considered to select substances to the groups, ECHA further described the screening process. The shortlisted substances are then manually examined by MS competent authorities. If substances are found to “pose a risk for human health or the environment,” they will be subjected to “the most appropriate REACH and CLP processes to ensure their safe use.”
ECHA noted that it “does not make the list of shortlisted substances public as it is based on automated selection and manual verification is needed to confirm a potential concern.”
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ECHA (January 23, 2018). “236 substances shortlisted for possible regulatory action.”
Chemical Watch (January 24, 2018). “ECHA selects more than 200 substances for manual screening.“
