All of Shamrock’s products are registered in accordance with the REACH legislation. REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) is the regulation concerning chemical substances in the EU. It came into effect on the 1st of June 2007 and, for most petroleum substances, the deadline to register was 30 November 2010. Under REACH every substance must have an extensive database with information concerning health and safety issues related to the substance. REACH will complement the existing GHS or CLP and MSDS to protect and inform the end consumer and workers who come into contact with the substance.
To gather the information needed, REACH instructed the industry to compile all the data. This ranged from toxicity testing to exposure scenarios, all with the purpose of identifying the risks and dangers of a product. The data gathering is an ongoing process because some information can only be measured after a certain amount of time (i.e: long term effects). Also new measuring methods can produce more accurate results and new exposure scenarios have to be tested. It is therefore important that downstream users mention to their suppliers how they intend to use the substances.
For every substance a forum has been created to ensure that all data about the same substance is centralized and duplicate work was avoided (especially animal testing). These forums called SIEF, are used by producers, importers and third party companies. It lends all the data gathered about a substance to its members and insures uniformity with the health and safety of the substance.
