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On April 27, South Korea's MoE announced the updates to the list of substances subject to priority management under K-REACH by the Announcement No. 2022-791.
The major amendments are summarized as below. No changes have been made compared to the draft revision (MoE Notice No. 2022-382) that was issued for public comments on January 28, 2022.
Combining the current Annex 1 and 2 into Annex 1 and grouping chemicals having the similar structures or same functional groups, assigning them with numbers from 1 to 645;
Adding 54 types of chemicals (in total 162 substances) that are confirmed to have hazard of endocrine disorder, PBT, vPvB, or CMR corresponding to the designation criteria under K-REACH, and assigning them with numbers from 646 to 699;
Deleting 4 chemicals previously designated, since they are already listed as prohibited substances
Clearly indicating that hydrate/anhydride of the listed substances are also subject to priority management.
The updated whole list can be accessed here3.
The original list of substances subject to priority management was published on December 28, 2018 (CL news4), consisting of
Annex 1 of 204 substances, effective from 1 Jul 2019; and
Annex 2 of 468 substances, effective from 1 Jul 2021.
Considering the fact that both the Annex 1 and the Annex 2 have been in effect, they are now combined for easy management.
As for the newly designated 162 substances, according to the 2018 chemical statistics survey under CCA, 45 of them are handled by 2,956 companies in South Korea, while the other 117 substances actually haven’t been distributed domestically. This move is to preemptively restrict the use of such substances in consumer products.
According to K-REACH, manufacturers or importers have legal obligations to notify the authority on the substance name, use, content, hazards, simple exposure information, etc. if their products containing a priority management substance with the quantity above 1t/y and the content exceeding 0.1% w/w. However, the notification is not required if the substance has been registered under K-REACH.
The amendments took effect immediately. However, the newly added 162 substances can comply with the corresponding obligations from January 1, 2024.
