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Thailand’s national chemical management policy has drawn a lot of attention since the Department of Industrial Works (DIW) announced that it would compile a national chemicals inventory and expand the management scope of the Hazardous Substances Control Act (HSCA) by adding the annex 5.6 to the hazardous substances list. Despite the importance of this topic for global enterprises, DIW seldom publishes English language information regarding chemical policy changes. So when the Director of Hazardous Substances Control Bureau under DIW, Ms. Somsri Suwanjaras gave her speech at REACH24H’s Chemical Regulatory Annual Conference (CRAC 2016) on Sep 20th, she received the most questions during the Q&A session in the afternoon.
First Ms. Somsri introduced the current management framework of chemical substances in Thailand. The management of hazardous chemicals in Thailand is implemented by the Hazardous Substance Control Act. The manufacture, import, export, sale, storage, transport, etc. of the hazardous substances must follow the requirements specified in the Act. The Act categorized the hazardous substances into 4 types with corresponding hazard levels and obligations, including notification, registration, application for license, etc. 6 annexes of hazardous chemicals comprise the scope of the Act. Each of the 6 annexes lists the substances that fall under the management of one of 6 competent authorities.
Annex 5 is regulated by DIW under the Ministry of Industry (MOI) and is the list that the chemical industry is most concerned with. The scope of annex 5 was expanded earlier this year by Annex 5.6. Instead of giving a list of substances, Annex 5.6 provides 10 hazard properties and stipulates that all chemicals that meet the hazard criteria and haven’t been included in other substance lists should be added into this annex through notification.
The 1st stage of notification of Annex 5.6 was scheduled to be terminated by the end of 2016. Many enterprises were understandably worried about this because there are only 3 months left and many of them are still unsure about the details of the notification or haven’t even started their notifications yet. The good news is the Annex 5.6 notification won’t stop after Dec 31st 2016. Enterprises can still notify through the system after the deadline. However, the chemicals notified after the deadline won’t be added into the 1st version of the national chemical inventory. So they may be considered as “new chemicals” until the inventory is further supplemented and expanded. Before that, enterprises will be subject to increased compliance obligations.
Although Annex 5.6 requires chemicals with certain hazardous properties to be notified, enterprises can still notify their chemicals when manufacturing or importing, even if they don’t have any hazard classifications. These chemicals can be added to the national chemical inventory after the 1st stage notification deadline and spared many compliance duties.
Another recurring issue raised during CRAC 2016 was confidential business information (CBI) during notification. Some foreign manufactures don’t want to disclose the components information of their products to their importers. Ms. Somsri provided detailed practical guidance on avoiding CBI risks. The notifier can contact DIW with relevant materials and receive a tracking number from DIW. Then the supplier can email their CBI and other information with this tracking number to DIW at [email protected]ail .go.th. DIW will review the materials and determine whether the product is hazardous and needs to comply with certain compliance duties or not.
All the chemicals notified through Annex 5.6 system will be included into the national chemical inventory, which is an inventory of existing chemicals. This inventory will be the basis of a more comprehensive chemical management regulation system in Thailand. Because it has some characteristics of Europe’s REACH system, Thailand’s regulation is often referred to as “Thailand’s REACH-like regulation” by the public and the media, including ChemLinked. However, when asked by ChemLinked if the DIW is satisfied by this description, Ms. Somsri smiled but gave a negative answer. “When talking about European REACH, people will picture a lot of data requirements, dossiers and paperwork”, she said, “But in Thailand things are not that complicated. Besides, some ‘new chemicals’ in Thailand may have been used for over 40 years in Europe, China or Japan. Our regulation won’t be the same as European REACH.”
Neither Thailand’s chemical industry nor its law enforcement authorities are ready to deal with the expense and burden of a system like Europe’s REACH. DIW has already received thousands of notifications since the Annex 5.6 notification was open which is a huge workload for its limited staff. ChemLinked would like to remind our readers to start notification as early as possible to make sure their chemicals appear on the 1st version of the inventory of existing chemicals.
