Recently, Philippine Environmental Management Bureau (EMB) published a draft of the 3rd revised Priority Chemicals List (PCL).
The Priority Chemicals List was firstly published in 1998 and only contained 28 chemicals. Since then, EMB has been making revisions to the list and has appended it with chemicals regarded to pose unreasonable risks to public health, workplace, and the environment. The latest revision occurred in 2005 when the PCL was expanded to 48 chemicals. The number of chemicals supplemented in the most recent revision is more than the total number of chemicals added in all previous revisions. The number of priority chemicals has almost doubled and now stands at 92. Unlike the former version of the PCL which didn’t provide the CAS number for each chemical, the newly revised PCL provides both CAS numbers and the chemical names in the Philippine Inventory of Chemicals and Chemical Substances (PICCS). The importer, distributors, and users of these priority chemicals are required to secure a PCL Compliance Certificate from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) through the online permission and monitoring system.
10 chemicals have also been removed from the PCL, because EMB has already issued the Chemical Control Orders (CCO) on these chemicals. Enterprise don’t have to apply for PCL compliance certificates for these chemicals and only have to comply with the CCO rules and regulations. (See EMB movements on CCOs recently here and here.)
