Earlier this year ChemLinked has reported on the revision of Australia’s National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) . The goal of the reform is to reduce regulatory burden and help Australia’s chemical industry to become more competitive on an international level while maintaining the integrity of EHS regulatory mechanisms.
4 rounds of consultation have been completed and the last consultation period ended recently. Each successive round of consultation has lead to amendments of the current Scheme and received feedback and suggestions from the industry. Now the consolidated amendments and feedback are being discussed internally. The updated regulation is expected to come out in April 2017 and should be implemented from July 1st 2018. After that, there will be a one-year transition period. Some technical details relating to exposure data and exemptions will be included in supporting documents, which will continue to be drafted and consulted on until 2018.
Under the newly revised Scheme, lower risk chemicals will be subject to facilitated market entry in the form of reduced technical barriers to trade. Post-market assessment and supervision will still be emphasized. Chemicals which are considered as medium to high hazards will need to obtain certificates before introduction to the market. Enterprises will be encouraged to use chemicals with lower risks which will be subject to greatly reduced regulatory compliance costs.
