Brazil Moves Forward on Industrial Chemicals Regulation

Work on Brazil's planned industrial chemicals regulation is moving forward again after Conasq, the country's National Chemical Safety Agency, met on 6-7 July to review responses to last year’s consultation on a draft policy.

This sets out provisions covering the registration, evaluation and control of chemicals, as well as plans to establish a national chemicals register and technical committees for selecting substances and imposing regulatory measures.

At the meeting, Conasq divided comments submitted in the consultation into four categories: a matter of law; a matter of regulations (secondary level law); out of scope; and doubts and other issues.

The comments touched on a wide range of subjects, including:

> the need for the proposed regulation to be more far-reaching and take in, among other things, nanomaterials, pharmaceuticals and veterinary products;

> the use of an only representative legal entity;

> the nature and protection of confidential business information (CBI);

> the need for a formalised annual notifying period;

> lowering the threshold for reporting a substance to 100kg/year (from one tonne/year);

> the establishment of an appeals board to allow decisions to be challenged; '

> and a ban on animal testing.

The meeting also discussed lead in paints, mercury and raising awareness on chemical safety.

The agency is scheduled to meet again on 12-14 September. However, it may meet on 16 August to finalise the screening process and discuss the contributions classified as a 'matter of law'.

Next steps

Conasq is currently evaluating and providing public justifications for its acceptance or rejection of all of the responses. When this process is complete, it will approve the final text of an amended draft law. The environment, health, labour and industry ministers will then review it and put their names to it before sending it to Congress.

Here it must be submitted to one or more parliamentary commissions, and to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, before being sent to the President of the Republic.

Conasq says it has been "holding regular and extraordinary meetings to accomplish these tasks by the end of 2017".

The consultation document says the policy is needed because despite Brazil having established regulatory schemes for specific types of chemical products, such as pesticides, sanitisers, food additives, medicines and cosmetics, a large number of substances, especially those used in industrial processes, are not covered.

It estimates that 10-15,000 substances are placed on the national market and used "without any kind of monitoring or systematic control of public power – a gap that this draft law aims to remedy".