Abstract

Powered by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), begins with this issue of Chemistry Today, the REACH column, that aims to provide our readers with practical information on the progress in the adoption of the EU Regulation introduced to improve the protection of human health and the environment from the risks of chemical substances.

Keywords: Sports pitches, glyphosate, nanomaterials, classification and labelling, and tattoos, regulatory.

Throughout spring, ECHA has developed some very interesting scientific opinions, which have also been drawing a lot of media attention.

ARTIFICIAL SPORTS PITCHES

In one of the opinions, we were assessing the safety of recycled rubber granules that are widely used in artificial sports pitches.

These pitches are used by a wide range of people from children playing on them at grassroots level to professional athletes plying their trade, but concerns were raised that exposure to the rubber granules used on the pitches could be linked with health risks including increased rates of cancer.

The European Commission asked ECHA to assess the health risks and the Agency’s findings were published in late February 2017: https://echa.europa.eu/documents/10162/13563/annex-xv_report_rubber_granules_en.pdf/dbcb4ee6-1c65-af35-7a18-f6ac1ac29fe4

ECHA found that there was a very low level of concern from playing on these pitches. This amounted to a risk of less ...