Data management 'will be key' under China's overarching chemical framework

Companies handling chemicals in China need to consider data management issues – including possible joint submission of data – as the country's draft chemicals framework progresses towards approval, which could take place as early as this year. "China’s new draft framework is all about data, and for industry, data management will be key," Heng Li, senior associate at law firm Mayer Brown, told Chemical Watch. The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) published the framework – the draft Environmental Risk Assessment and Control Regulation for Chemical Substances (Eracs) – in January 2019, notifying a second draft to the WTO in September.  Once approved, Eracs will become China’s overarching chemical framework, managing both new and existing chemical substances. The draft regulation, which will affect any company handling chemicals, is similar to TSCA in the US or Japan’s Chemical Substances Control Law (CSCL) in that it would require pre-market approval of new substances and risk evaluation of certain existing ones.