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GreenPeace: A Big Step for China Chemical Blacklist System

The 12th FYP for environmental risk prevention and control on chemicals was released on the 20th of Feb, 2013 resulting in 58 distinct categories of chemicals highlighted for priority risk prevention and control. Greenpeace outlined the risks associated with priority chemicals to be controlled in the future and also compared the list generated by the FYP with the blacklist from other countries/region. Greenpeace’s comparative assessment revealed that there are fewer chemicals in China’s Blacklist than other countries and hoped that the list could be further expanded to encompass a greater range of toxic chemicals.

The chemicals in list can be classified into three sub-groups,

  1. Chemicals with accumulative risks

  2. Chemicals with related with environmental accidents

  3. Characteristic Chemicals

PBTs, vPvBs and the CMRs such as the notorious BPA and the Nonyl Phenol have been listed as “List of chemicals with cumulative risk”, which have already been banned or restricted in the developed countries. There have been a number of incidents forcing China to reassess current regulations such as the “PX group incidence” in Dalian and Ningbo, and the leak disasters of phenol and aniline necessitating China to reevaluate these chemicals by listing them into the “List of chemicals with high environmental accidents occurrence rate”.

A paradigm shift in China’s attitude towards environmental safety concerns has transformed, broadened and rationalized its scope as to what constitutes an environmental safety issue. In previous years, the only criteria under China assessed environmental impact were control on the waste water, waste gas and industrial by products and residue. Integral to the FYP’s approach is the expansion of these criteria to encompass evolving concerns. The number of chemicals in China’s blacklist is much smaller than that of more developed countries. The “Master List” in German and the “Extremely Hazardous Substance” in the US  blacklisted 794 and 359 chemicals respectively. In order for China to bridge the regulatory gap it needs to expand upon its own hazardous chemicals regulatory framework and the latest FYP has to go a long way to achieve this end.

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