The OECD Clearing House on New Chemicals (CHNC) brought together representatives of interested governments and the chemical industry working cooperatively to reduce overall burdens associated with new chemical notification reviews, while maintaining the high quality of health and safety decisions for new chemicals.

 

The CHNC undertook and facilitated work aimed at streamlining the New Chemicals notification processes:

• To enhance the exchange of information and work sharing on new chemical notification and assessments; 
• To facilitate greater mutual recognition of assessments, and 
• To progress towards mutual acceptance of notifications.

 

The vision that the Clearing House was working towards was a sustainable world where:

• Countries can see, understand and accept each others’ decisions aimed at protecting human health and the environment; 
• Companies can submit one notification and then market globally;
• Countries and companies are more efficient and effective in their activities related to new chemicals;
• This world would have been achieved within an equivalence framework, if applicable.

 

The OECD New Chemicals group existed since 1999 to 2016, first as the New Chemicals Task Force, and later as the Clearing House on New Chemicals. The work of the Clearing House was then focused on three major areas:

1. Developing and implementing work sharing arrangements to progress towards mutual acceptance of notifications.
2. Working towards common approaches for notification, particularly for substances which are either exempt from notification or subject to reduced regulatory requirements.
3. Making notifications more efficient and effective through electronic tools: The Clearing House was working on the creation of a software tool to assist in the generation of hard copy and electronic forms needed for notifying new chemical substances.  The tool was to enable a notifier to collect and store the necessary information for preparation of a variety of dossiers, as well as import such information from existing electronic sources. It was to allow users to output the information to populate the appropriate fields in forms for submission in all of the economies’ formats or transmit the data electronically as required.

 

The OECD brings together government officials and stakeholders who review and assess notifications from companies who wish to market new chemicals and explores ways to share such work and harmonise activities to reduce work for governments and costs for industry.

 

Publications:

• Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the OECD  Clearing House on New Chemicals Parallel Process: 
  • Complete guidance document (1 October 2012)
  • Summary document (1 October 2012)
    
    
• Data Analysis of the Identification of Correlations between Polymer Characteristics and Potential for Health or Ecotoxicological Concern  (30 January 2009) 
• Guidance on Definitions of Key Terms for New Chemical Notification (20 June 2007)
• Pilot Phase of the OECD Parallel Process for the Notification of New Chemicals (30 March 2006)
• OECD Definition of Polymer

 

Related Topics:

• Activities on (Q)SARs
• OECD Harmonised Templates

 

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permanent url: http://www.oecd.org/env/newchemicals