Written Confirmation Exemption Criteria under South Korea’s Chemical Control Act

Criteria for exemption from chemical confirmation under South Korea’s Chemical Control Act (CCA) CCA were drafted by the MoE (Announcement No. 2015-553) and issued on 16 Jul for public consultation. The consultation period ended on 5 Aug 2015. 

According to Article 9 of the CCA, manufacturers or importers of chemicals shall submit the “Written Confirmation of Details of Chemical Product” to the MoE prior to manufacture or import after careful self-evaluation to ascertain whether or not a chemical product contains any regulated chemicals. The following list contains the 7 kinds of regulated chemicals:

1. Phase-in substances subject to registration (PEC substances)

2. Non phase-in substances, namely new chemical substances

3. Toxic substances

4. Substances subject to authorization

5. Restricted Substances

6. Prohibited Substances

7. Substances requiring accident contingency preparation

The followings are the newly drafted exemption criteria:

• Chemicals, contained in a product which possess a function in solid form, not released during normal use;

• Chemicals imported which are incorporated in machines, or imported along with machines or devices for trial run (except for the case when chemicals imported separately);

• Chemicals produced accidently from chemical reactions that occur due to exposure to environmental factors, e.g. air, moisture, micro-organism or sunlight, etc.

• Existing chemicals proven to be low risk and backed by sufficient information, designated as existing chemical exempt from reporting requirement by Appendix 1 of MOE Announcement 2014-239;

• Naturally occurring chemicals, that if modified chemically won’t cause changes to chemical structure, designated as existing chemical exempt from reporting requirement by Appendix 2 of MOE Announcement 2014-239;

• Identified impurities or by-products, not classified as hazardous chemicals;

• Imported products used for consumer purposes, such as stationeries, however, this does not apply to products containing hazardous chemicals.

Any comments can be submitted to the MoE via E-mail ([email protected], [email protected]) or at telephone (044-201-6783,6779 ).