CHIP is short for:
*Northern Ireland will implement these changes through regional legislation later this year.
The CHIP regulations were last updated on 6 April 2009, when the latest regulations came into force. CHIP 4 brings national legislation into line with the transitional arrangements set out in the recent European Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 on Classification, Labelling and Packaging of Substances and Mixtures – known as the CLP Regulation. CHIP 4 allows both the provisions of CHIP and the CLP Regulation to be applied and enforced in Great Britain.
CHIP implements two European Community (EC) Directives:
The purpose of these is to provide an EU-wide system to make sure that people are properly informed about the danger of chemicals both at work and in the home. They also improve the Single Market by requiring all suppliers of dangerous chemicals to provide the same standard of information to their customers.
Copies of the EC Directives can be obtained from Legislation.gov.uk.
Safety data sheets (SDS) are no longer part of the CHIP regulations. But SDS still have to be provided to those who use chemicals in a professional capacity. These provisions now sit in Article 31 and Annex II of the REACH Regulation. As before, the SDS should be provided the first time the chemical is supplied and subsequently if the ingredients of the product (composite substances) change and new information has to be included.
It is important for chemical suppliers to understand what classification and labelling information should or may be included in a SDS during the transitional period offered by the CLP Regulation where the existing classification and labelling system and the CLP will run in parallel.
More information can be found on the REACH website.
The technical content of the Dangerous Substances Directive is contained in a number of Annexes, for example:
In order to reflect technical and scientific developments, these Annexes were changed from time to time. They were altered following a vote on a proposal in a special committee of Member States Experts known as a 'Technical Progress Committee' (TPC). The TPC meetings were preceded by scientific discussions held at the European Chemicals Bureau (ECB) to which stakeholders (including representatives of business and unions) were invited. The resulting measure (known as an Adaptation to Technical Progress (ATP)) was formally adopted as a Commission Directive and published in the Official Journal of the European Communities.
Where these ATPs included agreed (or harmonised) classifications and accompanying labelling requirements, these classifications and labelling requirements are legally binding on all chemical suppliers from the specified date.
However, this system will be replaced over the coming years following the entry into force of the CLP Regulation on 20 January 2009.
Under Article 37(4) of the CLP Regulation, the Risk Assessment Committee (RAC) of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) will now evaluate proposals from Member States and in certain circumstances from industry for harmonised classification and labelling of a substance as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction category 1A, 1B or 2, or as a respiratory sensitiser, and also for other effects on a case-by-case basis.
More information can be found here:
CHIP is enforced by HSE inspectors, except in retail premises where Local Authority Trading Standards Officers have enforcement responsibility.
Under CHIP 4 there is an obligation to disclose the chemical identities of hazardous chemicals on packaging labels (and in safety data sheets under the REACH Regulation). This is to convey important information on the ingredients that contribute to the hazard(s) of the substance or preparation. However, it has been acknowledged by the EC that such disclosure of constituents of preparations may put at risk the confidential nature of a manufacturer's intellectual property.
To address this, the DPD allows for confidentiality of some chemical names, ie an alternative name may be used instead of the chemical name to preserve intellectual property. CHIP 4 implements this provision in Great Britain.
HSE is the authority with responsibility for administering the applications for confidentiality in Great Britain. HSE will also deal with applications from Northern Ireland.