ECHA Sector Approach on Plastics Additives published

The ECHA Sector Approach on Plastics Additives has been published, focusing on end use and involving the European Chemical Agency together with the industry supply chain.

The publication follows the addition of the EuPC and EuMBC Use Maps for masterbatching, compounding, and converting processes, which were published in order to facilitate 2018 registrations.

The new deliverables consist of a verified inventory of the most common additives used above 100T in plastics, including information on their function, the type of polymer where additives are used and their concentration, as well as a methodology in order to estimate the relative additives release potential from plastics matrices, and the application of this methodology to additives within the domain of the applicability of the method.

These deliverables are a contribution to the automated screening by ECHA, and in the next step Member States and ECHA will further prioritise which additives should be subject to an evaluation based on other information such as substances hazardousness, uncertainties and the results of the manual screening.

Only at this stage is the risk assessment as documented in the registration dossier actually considered, including the assessment of the actual exposure from plastics articles, which depend on many parameters, such as the application of use, the set-up of the article, its geometry, and where and how it is used.

Marc Cornu, President of EuMBC, said: “The key learnings and takeaways from this project are an improved communication across the supply chain and a further demonstration of the need for strong cooperation between different stakeholders, including authorities, in order to generate reliable data on plastics additives and uses. It also potentially allows authorities to better focus their resources in their evaluation.”