PARTNERSHIPS
Sector wide business support
Health & Safety Classification and Labelling
BCF members see the health and safety of their employees and
customers as paramount. The Safety Advisory Panel has provided
guidance to the industry on relevant issues, such as: These past 12 months were a busy time for the CLP Panel.
Work continued to lobby against the new requirements for
the submission of harmonised information to Poison Centres
according to CLP Annex VIII (Commission Regulation (EU)
2017/542). ECHA is developing guidance, an IT tool for
submission and a new Product Categorisation System which will
help in monitoring poisoning cases. The Commission workability
study demonstrated that the legislation was not currently fit for
purpose and would be extremely burdensome, if at all possible,
for the coatings industry.
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Legislation compliance
The safe use of isocyanate-containing paints
Work in confined spaces
Preventing falls from tankers
Storage and handling of industrial nitrocellulose
Noise at work
Management of change
The BCF’s new PaintSafe campaign was launched, aiming to
promote the safe use of paints and related products and provide
best practice for decorators and other paint applicators. To date
two leaflets have been produced, one aimed at professional
painters and decorators and the other for professional and
industrial users of isocyanate-based paints.
The issuing of Safety Alerts and incident reports of relevance
to the industry, both from BCF members and CEPE’s Safety
Group, continued. The Panel is setting up a database of handling
equipment. The annual survey of accidents was improved with
the number of injuries significantly lower this year. The BCF
continues its close liaison with the HSE continued through the
Chemical and Downstream Oil Industry Forum and the Small
Business Trade Association Forum, as well as through individual
contacts.
BCF ANNUAL HANDBOOK 2019/20
The preliminary findings of the DG GROW “Study on
workability issues of Annex VIII CLP” identified some serious
issues in the implementation of the new provisions. BCF has
written to both HSE and Department of Health requesting a
serious rethink on the requirements and timings pointing out
that the legislation, as currently in force, would bankrupt the
coatings industry. The issues stem from the inability of our sector
to utilise the Generic Product Identifier to limit the number of
submissions and Unique Formula Indicators (UFI) that will need
to be made.
The preliminary results of the study confirms that a change need
to be made in the legislation to make it workable. However,
there is also concern that any legal change cannot be done
before the first application deadline of 1st January 2020 (for
harmonized reporting of mixture for consumers use). In addition,
the finalised guidance has not yet been published and the
second, more useful version of the ECHA portal for submissions
will not be finalised before November. This gives industry no
time to prepare and make the very many submissions required.
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