Chemicals

Draft Government bill to Parliament for an act amending the Chemicals Act

It is proposed that the Chemicals Act be amended in line with Article 45 of the CLP Regulation of the European Community on the classification, labelling and packaging of chemicals. A new Annex VIII to the Regulation was adopted pursuant to the Article, which harmonises the information to be notified to poison centres in the European Union on mixtures classified as hazardous on the basis of health or physical effects in accordance with the hazard classes referred to in the Annex.

The Finnish Poison Information Center would be appointed as an appointed body under the terms of Article 45 of the CLP Regulation, which provides for the bodies responsible for receiving information relating to emergency health response. Therefore, once the transition periods have expired, the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency would no longer deliver the information on composition of mixtures required for the prevention and treatment of poisoning to the Poison Information Center. In future, the information would be available to the Poison Information Center from the centralised system maintained by the European Chemicals Agency. The system is intended to be operational on the date of application of Annex VIII to the CLP Regulation. However, the national system would still be available to the Poison Information Center until 1 January 2025, after which the Poison Information Center would transition to using the system maintained by the European Chemicals Agency.

Additionally, this bill proposes to amend the Chemicals Act insofar as required in order to deliver nationally collected information on chemicals via the new digital service system. Operators manufacturing and importing chemicals are currently already obligated to report information on chemicals to the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency, however under the new system, the information would be collected in a centralised way via a digital portal. The new system would facilitate the exchanges of enterprises using chemicals with the Finnish Safety and Chemicals Agency.