Published on Nov 21st, 2018 by MEE Announcement No. 2018-58, 45 chemical substances were officially added to China’s Inventory of Existing Chemical Substances (IECSC). 

These substances were notified previously under China’s new chemical notification system and five years have passed since they were first manufactured or imported, of which 2 substances were notified under MEP Order 7 (Measures for the Environmental Management of New Chemical Substances) and the other 43 substances were notified under SEPA Order 17 (the precursor of MEP Order 7). These chemicals will be regulated as existing chemical substances and there will be no tonnage limit.

For the 43 substances notified under SEPA Order 17, there are no environmental management categories (i.e. general, hazardous, and hazardous of environmental concern) indicated since the original regulation hasn’t adopted such concepts. For the 2 substances notified through Regular Notification under MEP Order 7, they are classified as “hazardous of priority environmental concern” and “hazardous” respectively. For the hazardous substance of priority environmental concern, the use is explicitly specified as “used as pigment additive for printing ink”. There are 6 of the 45 substances listed confidentially with the generic name and serial number only.