On Sep 27th 2016, Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) published the latest batch of notified chemical substances that are added as existing chemical substances under the Industrial Safety and Health Law (ISHL) through an official gazette. This batch contains a total of 228 chemical substances, including mixtures, with ISHL gazette numbers from 25228 to 25455. Manufactures and importers of these chemical substances will no longer have to notify them as new chemical substances. After this batch, the total amount of existing chemical substances under ISHL is 66055.
The existing chemical substances under ISHL consist of 4 main parts:
Existing chemical substances stipulated by the government (including basic elements and natural chemicals).
New chemicals published by MHLW (similar to this batch).
Certain chemicals that are regarded as existing chemical substances.
Polymers that are regarded as existing chemical substances.
Before manufacturing and importing chemicals that are not existing chemical substances, enterprises need to conduct the new chemical substances notification under ISHL. The notified chemical substances will be published by official gazette about 8 months after the notification is completed. The official gazette is published 4 times a year, in March, June, September and December.
It should be noted that there are two types of new chemical substances notification in Japan, which are conducted under ISHL and Chemical Substances Control Law (CSCL) respectively. Enterprises should comply with these two regulations separately. However, Japanese government has taken actions to lower the compliance burden for enterprises by allowing the sharing of certain experimental data for the two notifications.
