South Korea issued the overhauled Toxic Chemical Control Act (TCCA) on 4 June 2013 as Presidential Decree No. 11862, which is renamed as Chemical Control Act (CCA) and will be in force on 1 Jan 2015, the same time when K-REACH goes effective.
The TCCA was amended due to the main concern of duplications with the K-REACH. Since 2015, many companies should comply with both the CCA and K-REACH for the same substance. The two Acts will establish a new regime of chemical management, under which the substances will be firstly determined as toxic chemical substance or be subject to authorization, restriction or prohibition based on the process under K-REACH, and then be further managed under CCA. The CCA will remain the power to license substances for manufacture, use, sale, storage, import and export, while the registration of new chemical substances will be transferred to K-REACH.
The provisions concerning “accident release prevention substance” are newly introduced into CCA. The list of the substances shall be designated and published by MoE (Article 39), which requires the companies handling the substance above corresponding tonnage threshold to submit the management plan every five years. The details concerning the format and submission of the management plan will be stipulated in subordinate statutes.
