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MEE Official Explains Further Measures to Enhance Chemical Regulation under MEE Order No. 12

More stringent regulation will be exercised over toxic and hazardous chemicals, which constitute a major source of new pollutants.

At a workshop on environmental management registration of new chemical substances held in late December 2020, Mr. Lin Jun, an official from the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE), elaborated on national and ministerial-level efforts to bolster the country’s chemical regulatory arrangements, especially in view of the implementation of MEE Order No. 12 [1].

It was made clear in the proposals for formulating the 14th Five-year Plan (2021-2015) that, a bigger focus shall be placed on treatment of new pollutants. Toxic and hazardous chemicals, as Mr. Lin noted, constitute a major source of new pollutants. This echoes the draft Regulations on Environmental Risk Assessment and Control of Chemical Substances. (Sources claim that the Regulations is now renamed the Regulations on Environmental Risk Assessment and Control of Toxic and Hazardous Chemical Substances.)

Targeted and scientific approaches will be adopted to address problems associated with such chemicals. In particular, environmental risk assessment will be regarded as an essential element in the work. To facilitate businesses’ understanding of environmental risk assessment of both existing and new chemicals, the MEE published three technical guidelines [2] dedicated to hazard assessment, exposure assessment and risk characterization respectively.

According to Mr. Lin, efforts have been underway to figure out the status quo of the manufacture and use of toxic and hazardous chemicals in China, and more solid work will be done to optimize the Inventory of Existing Chemical Substances in China (IECSC) to collect more risk and hazard information.

Besides, Mr. Lin also said that MEE is working on a manual for regulation of new chemical substances, which aims to ensure that enterprises assume primary responsibilities and can help authorities with their regulatory practices. As the manual will not be circulated publicly, businesses will not be able to access it, and their practices will be considered compliant as long as they  perform activities following MEE Order No. 12, its guidance [3] as well as the supporting guidelines.

Moreover, the application of computational toxicology will be further promoted. Steps will be taken to bolster the use of more advanced models, tools and methodologies, so as to gradually reduce the use of animal testing data.

At present, MEE is publicly soliciting viable predictive modeling software of computational toxicology. The adopted software will be used in preliminary screening for environmental risk assessment of existing chemicals, and those which can predict the reproductive toxicity and repeated dose toxicity of chemicals will be recommended for environmental management registration of new chemicals.

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