Interaction of the EU Chemicals Regulation-REACH-with Occupational Safety and Health Legislation: A Report from the 5th German REACH Congress.

In April 2021, the 5th German REACH Congress took place as a hybrid event with a focus on discussing interlinkages between REACH and the occupational safety and health (OSH) legislation. More than 1000 people from Germany, the EU, and non-EU countries representing all stakeholder groups participated via livestream. Around 10% of the participants provided their opinions on various issues in an online survey.

About hazard and risk assessment: regulatory approaches in assessing safety in the European Union chemicals legislation.

Hazard classification and labelling is the main and basic requirement for all industrial and consumer chemicals in the European Union, if they are not regulated under more specific legislation such as drugs, food ingredients or cosmetics. The first approach in hazard classification is hazard identification describing the hazardous properties of chemicals. Refinements in the classification criteria include the assessment of toxic potency (hazard characterisation) where feasible and the possibility to set higher or lower specific concentration limits for classification.