Until now this process is different for each EU member state, generating a fragmented approach to poison centres and complicating the process of selling hazardous chemical mixtures in multiple EU states.
Regulation 2017/542, which defines annex VIII of CLP, was published with the aim of harmonising the type and format of data to be notified to poison centres in the EU.
As the regulation itself specifies, a declaration complying to CLP Annex VIII will have to be sent electronically in a specific XML format, provided by the European Chemical Agency (ECHA).
ECHA created a portal dedicated to the European notification of hazardous mixtures, called PCN portal (Poison Centre Notification portal). Tis portal is available to industries, who can manage their notifications, and to designated bodies of member states, who can interface with it to accept the aforementioned notifications.
Nonetheless, the portal version that is currently available does not yet allow a "full" transmission of notified data. This happens because none of the member states is connected to this portal as of today, and therefore no member state is able to accept notifications through it.
ECHA recently published a summary document that gives an overview on how the different member states are approaching the implementation of CLP annex VIII. This document gives info for each member state on topics such as language of the notification, taxes associated to the notification, and the placing on the market of notified mixtures. The document is called “Member states decisions on implementing Annex VIII of the CLP” and can be found under “Key documents” on the link found at the bottom of this article.
Further enhancements to the PCN portal are planned for July and November 2019.
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