Blog - To good to be true

DREAM ON...

The dream: One world where hazard classification and labeling are unified. Where users in Asia and in Europe are warned in the same way about the dangers of air fresheners they use, where weed killer in North America is considered just as dangerous as in Europe, and where we handle requirements for products and producers in the same way across the world.

"…the enchanting environment of Rio…"

UNFORTUNATELY, nothing could be further from the truth 32 years after the inception of that beautiful dream in Rio de Janeiro. Was it due to the enchanting environment of Rio at that time, or has the world changed too much since then? The fact is that this beautiful dream is crumbling further and further. Countries (for readability, we'll consider Europe as one country for now, as CLP is the only GHS implementation that transcends national borders) are increasingly distancing themselves from GHS to introduce their own initiatives or to refrain from certain parts of GHS. America still has no plans to acknowledge environmental hazards and incorporate them into their own GHS implementation, and Europe is moving further away from GHS by introducing its own hazard classes (EDC, PBT, vPvB) and its own legal classifications (including specific concentration limits, M-factors, and ATEs).

"…in the EU, we also see that there are still many differences…"

Not only does the GHS dream seem to be falling apart, but also in the EU we see that there are many differences between member states. For example, the way in which a procedure established in CLP, such as the Poison Center Notification (PCN), is handled. In Belgium, you have to pay a substantial amount, Germany only has commercial poison control centers, Spain also wants information on products not classified, and in many Scandinavian countries, in addition to the PCN, there is also product registration, and so on.

"…Convenient for us but, we thought, perhaps also useful for you…"

A jungle of regulations, rules, and wishes from the various member states make it difficult to see the forest for the trees. Especially when the wishes keep changing continuously. It is precisely for this reason that we have been using country profiles internally for quite some time, where we keep track of countries with different requirements, wishes, or procedures.

Convenient for us but, we thought, perhaps also useful for you. For this very reason, we will enrich the knowledge base on our website with these country profiles. Concise overviews with country-specific requirements set up in a simple and understandable format in the ViB factory style. Starting from February, we will add a new country to the map of Europe every month.

We may not be able to save the dream, I'm afraid, but we can ensure that it doesn't turn into a nightmare.