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In Mar 2017, Japan’s government voted and passed the amendments to the Chemical Substance Control Law (CSCL) proposed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Ministry of Environment (MOE). On Dec 8th 2017, METI and MOE issued a notice, stipulating the enforcement date for the revision of CSCL.
The revisions include two major parts:
The management of the highly toxic chemical substances that fall under the category of “general chemical substances” due to current determination methods of general chemical substance. The revision adds two categories for these chemicals, which are “specified general chemicals” and “specified new chemicals”. This revision will take effect from Apr 1st 2018. The Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW), METI and MOE will notify the enterprises that have submitted notifications for the chemicals to be determined and issue a public notice of the determination results. The competent ministers will provide instructions, advice, etc. to the enterprises handling these chemicals. Enterprises are required to make all reasonable efforts to provide relevant information to their business partners.
The other part of the revision is about the upper tonnage limit of the low volume substances and small volume substances. A new concept called “environmental release amount” is introduced to replace the previous “total production or import amount”. The environmental release amount of a substance is calculated by the formula: [Environmental Release Amount] = [Manufacture or Import Amount] × [Release Factor]. The release factor is decided based on the specific use and application of the substance and varies among different industries. If the environmental release amount of a new substance across the nation is less than 10 ton/year, then it is regarded as a low volume substance. The upper limit for small volume substances is 1 ton/year. The low volume and small volume substances will enjoy favorable regulatory compliance policies. This revision will take effect from Jan 1st 2019. However, the detailed release factors for substances in different industries will be provided by other supporting documents, the release date of which haven’t yet been specified.
For detailed information of the revision, please see ChemLinked report: Japan Passed Amendments to CSCL.
