“Strictly controlling environmental risks” is one of the key emphases in the “Action Plan for Water Pollution Prevention” (also called “water 10”). The English translation is available here for your reference. The Action Plan puts on agenda a task that the environmental and health risks of existing chemicals will be assessed and the list of priority chemicals needing control will be published before the end of 2017. As planned the authority (China MEP will take the lead, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, National Health and Family Planning Commission and State Administration of Work Safety will participate) will strictly control and gradually phase out the production and use of high-risk chemicals.
On 15 Aug, the department of soil environmental management under China MEP held in Beijing a meeting on the above issues. So far the Solid Waste and Chemicals Management Center under China MEP (SCC-MEP) has drafted the technical methods for environmental and health risks of existing chemicals. In addition, the evaluation of the first batch of priority chemicals needing control has been initialized.
The authority’s long term ambition is to develop a draft C-REACH (China REACH, similar to EU REACH) to regulate all existing and new chemicals in China instead of the current notification system used for new chemicals only. However, based on the above management concept, China in the short term will not implement registration requirements on all existing chemical like EU REACH.
