SPORT to test REACH

The European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), European Commission and member states have joined forces to launch SPORT (Strategic Partnership on REACH Testing), an organisation designed to test how the proposed regulation on the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals will work in practice.

SPORT, the first time that industry and the EC have worked together to test legislation before it is enacted, aims to identify where problems might occur with the regulations and build solutions into the final legislation.

The project will include representatives from small and large chemical companies, who will simulate as close as possible the procedures for registering and evaluating eight substances or substance groups.

They will also test how the information on the safe use of these chamicals can be communicated both up and down the supply chain.

For each substance, the work will be led by the manufacturer or importer of the chemical, and all the bodies who would be involved in the real REACH process - downstream users, competent authorities of the member states, and the Joint Research Centre of the Commission, standing in for the Central Agency to be established in Helsinki - will all play their part.

The results will be monitored and analysed by an independent consultancy, which will produce a final report in mid-2005.