December 10th-12th, the U.S. Interagency CHS Coordinating group held the event to incorporate request and comments from different countries to work toward an international standard for hazardous chemicals. Formal reports have not been released of the status. Many topics were covered and new revisions were proposed to developing standards.
Within the GHS, a new paragraph was amended to the UN Model Regulations on the Transport of Dangerous Goods. A pictogram not required by the Regulations should only appear as part of the complete GHS label.
The 3rd revision of GHS introduced a chronic aquatic toxicity endpoint, the relevant metals guidance was not updated. ICMM requested a correspondence group to be mandated to update the relevant sections-contained in Annex 9 and 10 to the GHS. Simple corrections and amendments were accepted. The entire section on Rapid Removal from the Water column was eliminated from the text and the 3rd version only referes to the GHS principle of degradation quoted as Rapid Environmental Transformation. ICMM’s draft is to be circulated by December 19th. Correspondence group participants submit comments by February 10th, 2015. A final draft must be available to be finalized during May 2015.
The United States Correspondence Group proposed some of the following:
- -Review of definitions in each health hazard chapter for consistency. Improve consistency in terminology.
- -The PCI to determine if interpolation within one hazard category bridging principle includes an additivity approach. This is within the process of providing examples of the application of Interpolation within one hazard category.
- -Review terms such as “Unknown” or “Variable Compositions”, “Complex reaction products” and “biological materials”
- -Review information for aspiration hazards and determine updates.
Furthermore, labelling techniques were discussed. The progress of work on practical classification issues were updated since the last session. Topics such as dust explosion hazards, aspiration hazards, and nanomaterials were updated. This was led by the CEFIC to develop proposals to rationalize and improve the usability of hazard and precautionary statements. These may include proposals to eliminate redundancies among these statements, and proposals for further guidance and precedence rules for use of the statements. Another improvement was to consider giving more freedom to labelling practitioners and enforcement authorities in assigning precautionary statements and in the wording used in precautionary statements, and possibly to develop proposals. A third proposal was to address any other issues relating to the use of hazard and precautionary statements that the Sub-Committee wishes to refer to the informal correspondence group.
Capacity building was most notably discussed by Switzerland. Ideas were to provide assistance to United Nations programs and specialized agencies involved in training and capacity-building activities, such as UNITAR, ILO, FAO and WHO/IPCS through guidance materials, advice with training programs and identification of available resources.
Reference with informal documents and reports from the meeting:
http://www.unece.org/trans/main/dgdb/dgsubc4/c4inf28.html
