The European Chemical Agency (ECHA) invited journalists from all Europe to Helsinki for a technical briefing on its 2013 activities and challenges. The two-day event (2 – 3 February) included thematic briefings conducted by ECHA’s Directors.
The meeting was opened by Geert Dancet – ECHA Executive Director – who started his speech by stating that Europe is leading the world on the safe use of chemicals thanks to the Reach legislation. He pointed out that REACH aims to grant high levels of protection of human health and the environment, no unnecessary testing on vertebrate animals (thus the obligation to share tests information), to increase innovation (not only into new chemicals but also into new technologies which have permitted to substitute specific molecules) and strengthen competitiveness. Competitiveness is a more difficult point in the way that companies have an additional cost coming from registration and this leads companies to reflect whether to continue production for a particular substance or not. But REACH is not only related to suppliers: downstream users are involved as well. So one important point of REACH is to pass on the inform ...