Improving REACH

The European Commission has proposed a new system for chemicals control, the REACH system. The objectives of REACH with respect to risk assessment can be summarized in the form of two overarching goals. First, REACH aims at improved knowledge about the properties and the uses of individual chemical substances. Secondly, REACH is intended to increase the speed and efficiency of the risk assessment process and to make producers and importers of chemicals responsible for this process. The implementation of the REACH proposal will lead to increased availability of toxicological information but not to the extent that would be needed to achieve a sound scientific basis for risk assessment of individual substances. In this paper, we propose certain amendments of the current REACH proposal. The purpose of these proposals is to improve priority-setting and testing strategies and to simplify the risk assessment procedures.