The “Measures on the Management of Physical Hazard Identification and Classification for Chemicals” (SAWS Order 60) is formulated to address the identification and classification of unknown physical hazard for chemicals manufactured and imported in China.

This legislation specifies provisions with regard to the applicable scope of chemicals, the relevant regulatory authorities and their responsibilities, the industry’s obligations under the Order 60, procedures and arbitration of the physical hazard identification and classification, compilation and composition of the identification report and the classification report as well as the legal liabilities of noncompliance.

It is considered one of the supporting documents for China’s mandatory hazardous chemical registration campaign in the context of the SAWS Order 53 of which the Article 12 (4) requires the registration should record chemical information on physical, environmental and toxicological hazards available.

Compared with the draft act of the Order released in December 2012, the finalized text has gone through massive cuts and adjustments of sequence, with an obvious intention to weaken the administrative harshness of the draft and to ease the regulatory burden over affected companies. Some noteworthy changes could be summarized in the following list:

• The PHI&C highlights chemicals with uncertain physical hazards that are manufactured or imported for R&D purposes with a turnout or usage threshold above 1 ton/year. (Article 4).

• Companies failing to establish the internal PHI&C management profile system are to be penalized. (Article 19).

• Companies are allowed to assess a group of similar chemicals through a new application mode called “serial modification“(Article 21).

• Provisions on the management of accredited assessment institutes and their qualification are deleted.