News on the PCN format for Poison Centre Notification

CLP Annex VIII: what does it define?

Article 45 of the CLP regulation requires that importers and downstream users placing hazardous mixtures on the market communicate relevant data to the appropriate organisations, in order to prepare an emergency response when needed.

Until now this process has been different for each EU country. This has brought problems for those who place hazardous mixtures on the market of multiple EU countries, finding themselves with the need of submitting data to multiple organisations in multiple formats.

Regulation 2017/542, also known as CLP Annex VIII, has the aim of harmonising the submission process as well as its format on a european level

The PCN format

The European Chemical Agency (ECHA) has recently published the official 1.1 version of the PCN format guide. This is the harmonised format required by CLP AnnexVIII to harmonise the data structure of EU poison centre notifications.

ECHA also launched a pilot project to test the usability of this format.

At the moment these documents are available only in English.

ECHA conference

On May 21^st 2019 ECHA organised a conference dedicated to the harmonised notification to poison centres. Trace One will be taking part to it, in order to discover the latest news on this topic.

To see the ECHA documents related to the PCN format and to have further info on the ECHA event, follow these links:

• Poison Centres Notification format
• ECHA event on Annex VIII

Newsletter 120