Industrial chemical substances; (ICS: 13.020, 71)

Industrial Chemicals Registering Law, 5781-2020 (72 page(s), in Hebrew)

Israel's Ministry of Environmental Protection promotes establishing a mechanism for registering industrial chemicals and publishes a memorandum of a law titled "Industrial Chemicals Registering Law, 5781-2020". The law establishes a new mechanism aiming to reduce harmful effects to humans and the environment from chemicals used as raw materials in the local industry. The law includes the following:

·         Establishes a Chemical Inventory Registry;

·         Provides guidelines for performing risk assessment on selected chemicals;

·         Provides guidelines for conducting risk management by setting rules restricting the use of chemicals and or exposure to them;

·         Sets the authorities and power given to the registrar and to the Chemical Evaluation Advisory Committee;

Israel has an extensive regulation relating to the practices, import, production, use, maintenance, and transportation of chemical substances. However, the existing regulations are decentralized and allocated among various government ministries and usually does not include a systematic assessment of the chemicals and their effects on humans or their environmental impact. The new draft law sets a unified mechanism to register industrial chemicals, to be governed and regulated under one entity in the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

Manufacturers and importers of significant quantities of industrial chemicals (over 10 tons per year of natural or artificial chemicals used as a raw material in the industry) will be required to report to the new online Chemicals Registry at the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The information required is primary data and a full Safety Data Sheet (SDS). This information will be made public, subject to the restrictions required to protect intellectual property and trade secrets. Special attention will be made to reducing the bureaucratic burden and using relevant official databases.

The obligations imposed on manufacturers and importers will apply to chemical substances found in a mixture intended for use as a raw material in the industry, but not to mixtures of chemicals found in the finished products. The chemical quantity required to be reported will be tested according to the actual chemical quantity and not according to the total mixture.

There are four conditions for exempting an industrial chemical from the requirement to be registered, as defined in the different parts of the Law's Second Annex: 

·         Part 1: The chemical is regulated by different legislation;

·         Part 2: A chemical substance with a known risk level;

·         Part 3: A chemical substance from a natural source;

·         Part 4: Polymers, except for free monomers in a weight concentration of 2 or more present from the mixture.

The law is due to enter into force on 1 March 2023, and the establishment of the Chemical Inventory Registry should be completed and launched by 1 September 2024.