ECHA has released a new portal that allows companies to prepare and submit information on hazardous mixtures that can be used by poison centres.
The submission portal is a secure, online way to centrally manage notifications – creating, submitting and following their status. It is based on the harmonised format which defines the information requirements set in the CLP Regulation.
The portal allows companies to notify several Member States in which they intend to place their products on the market with a single submission. This will reduce companies’ administrative burden and costs when submitting information on hazardous mixtures to appointed bodies in EU Member States and EEA countries. ECHA is not charging a fee for the use of the portal but some Member States may levy fees to cover their costs. Notifications submitted through the portal will be valid once the relevant Member State is ready to accept them.
Create your notification online
The Submission portal offers you a secure way to submit notifications to appointed bodies, and track their status in real time. The current portal version includes all the main features needed to create, submit and check your notifications.
Once you have logged into the portal, you can access IUCLID Cloud and start preparing your notifications. A guide on preparing and submitting poison centre notifications is embedded as part of the portal to help you with this task.
Before submitting, you can check the content of your notification using the validation assistant feature. This feature creates a report listing any deficiencies so that you can make changes, if necessary, before finalising it.
Individual Member States may decide to use the ECHA Submission portal alone or in addition to their national submission systems. The majority of Member States have opted to support only the ECHA Submission portal to receive their notifications – find out more on this topic by checking the list covering all Member States on ECHA’s poison centres website.
If you will have to notify, log into the system now and start getting familiar with how the ECHA Submission portal works.
Background
Under the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation, companies placing hazardous mixtures on the market have to provide information about these mixtures to the relevant national appointed bodies. This information has to be provided in a harmonised format from 1st January 2020 for mixtures for consumer use, from 1st January 2021 for mixtures for professional use, and from 1st January 2024 for mixtures for industrial use. The appointed bodies in Member States make this information available to poison centres so that they can provide rapid medical advice in the event of an emergency.
Before placing any mixture classified for human health or physical hazards on the market, you must submit information about that mixture to relevant appointed bodies in the EU.
This notification must be made in the Poison Centres Notification (PCN) format, which structures the information on hazardous mixtures in a harmonised way making sure that the information provided to poison centres is consistent across the EU. This format follows the information and data requirements set out in Annex VIII to the CLP Regulation.
There are specific timelines for notifying, depending on how the mixture will be used. For example, if it is intended to be used by consumers, you need to notify in the PCN format starting from 1 January 2020.
Future developments
Although the current version of the submission portal contains all the relevant features that you need to start preparing your notifications, further improvements to the user interface and some additional functionalities will be introduced in upcoming releases planned for July and November 2019.
Improvements such as an online help that gives you targeted instructions on how to fill in information required for a specific page, as well as support for group submissions, will follow. If you have your own IT system for creating notifications, later releases will allow you to automatically submit your dossiers to the ECHA Submission portal (system-to-system integration).
For authority users, later versions will include a searchable database, with basic query functionalities and an online view of the dossier content.
See the information video here:
Make sure to find out about your new obligations and how these could affect your business.
Hibiscus Plc is ready to support you with the authoring of Safety Data Sheets and production of product labels to allow a smooth transition into compliance for 2020 onwards.