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In accordance with Article 6, Supplementary Provisions of Japan’s Chemical Substance Control Law (2009), the regulation is subject to review after full 5 years of full implementation. On Mar 23, the Report of the CSCL Implementation Status Review Committee was published in a bid to enlighten the competent authorities on possible regulatory reforms and amendments to achieve the WSSD (World Summit on Sustainable Development) goal for sound management of Chemicals by 2020.
The report consists of 3 chapters on 1) background of the review work, 2) retrospective study on the regulatory schemes under the current CSCL including screening evaluation and risk assessment of existing chemical substances, examination and confirmation of new chemical substances and the overall chemical management system, and 3) advisory comments on current issues related to chemical risk assessment and management measures.
It’s mentioned in the report that the following approaches may be implemented to accelerate chemical risk assessment:
To improve the prioritization mechanism, i.e. to better differentiate the substances of higher risk level from those that only require basic risk assessment
To utilize hazard information collected or generated by the industry during risk assessment, including data generated from non-GLP testing and non-testing methods such as QSAR -- Further research is needed to determine eligibility and data reliability criteria
To work towards a more equitable division of financial responsibilities between industry and government when a business is requested by the competent authorities to carry out tests and study on chemical hazards for prioritized assessment
It’s well recognized that non-testing methods like QSAR and read-across are efficient to assess the hazardous properties of chemical substances, however, introducing these methods into the legal framework is proceeding very slowly. Japan will continue to evaluate non-testing methods or models and explore their applications, while also keeping close attention to new developments in these sectors.
