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REACH, Product Safety & Consumer Well-being

Product Safety and Consumer Well-being

To understand and manage the potential health, safety, and environmental risks of our products, we take a careful and considered approach to risk evaluation and assessment. Our corporate regulatory team works with stakeholders, customers and suppliers to monitor and react to changes in hazard properties or exposure of our products. Through careful product stewardship, we aim to deliver innovative and sustainable products with increased performance and value, without harming people or the environment.

Our team of experts

The regulatory team is comprised of a global network of highly effective individuals with a wide variety of expertise, including regulatory affairs professionals, toxicologists, ecotoxicologists and hazard communication specialists.

In addition to supporting our core business units, many of our corporate regulatory team members work collaboratively with a wide range of external industry bodies and research groups, helping to enhance and improve the safety of our products and the global regulations that govern their use. Our active participation in research groups, trade associations and national and international committees allows for a mutual exchange of information, befitting Innospec, our counterparts and customers.

We are proud to work with:

  • ACC (American Chemistry Council)
  • CIA (UK’s Chemical Industries Association)
  • CEFIC (European Chemical Industry Council)
  • ATC (Technical Committee of Petroleum Additive Manufacturers in Europe)
  • CESIO (European Committee of Organic Surfactants and their Intermediates) and ERASM (Environmental and Health Risk Assessment Management of Surfactants and Detergents)
  • CTPA (Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association) and EFfCI (European Federation for Cosmetic Ingredient Manufacturers)
  • EOSCA (European Oilfield Specialty Chemicals Association)

Global Chemical Regulations

National and regional regulations are continuously evolving and we work hard to ensure that our products comply with changes in legislation. 

In 2022, the European Commission focused on developing further regulation and implementing their flagship Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) project – part of the wider European Green Deal.

Key actions included:

  • Public consultations and workshops on the outlined concepts and proposals
  • The revision of the REACH Regulation
  • A roadmap setting for EU REACH restrictions and recommendations on the European assessment framework for ‘Safe and Sustainable by Design’
  • The revision of the regulations of classification and labelling, including the introduction of new classes for hazards; endocrine disrupting (ED), persistent, persistent mobile and toxic (PMT), or very persistent and very mobile (vPvM)

Our regulatory team monitors and evaluates developments under EU CSS to ensure we are proactively prepared for any forthcoming or potential changes in legislation.

Staying Compliant with REACH

  • EU REACH
  • UK REACH
  • Turkish and Korean REACH
To ensure compliance with current EU REACH regulations, we regularly submit new registrations for substances newly introduced to the market.

It is a legal requirement to pro-actively review and update dossiers with the latest information and assess any impact this has on workers, consumers, and environmental safety. We continue with our ongoing commitment as a signatory member company to the CEFIC Dossier Improvement Plan and remain on schedule to complete reviews and resubmissions of all registration dossiers by the 2026 target date and complete all our obligations under the Plan. In 2022, we updated 31 of our registration dossiers.
After Brexit, we actively participated in UK government consultations and workshops on future chemicals strategy and regulations. Following these consultations, the proposal is to extend the registration deadlines of UK REACH.

This change will coincide with an alternative registration model (ATR), proposed in response to stakeholder concerns regarding the cost of acquiring and submitting the required data to complete ‘grandfathered’ registrations. The model will aim to reduce costs to businesses of this transition, while also ensuring high levels of human health and environmental protection remain.

We have successfully completed the initial ‘grandfathering’ of our existing EU REACH registrations into UK REACH. We await the outcomes of the registration deadline changes and ATR proposals before making necessary preparations to complete the UK registration process.
Turkey and South Korea are introducing country-specific chemical management regimes.

Our regulatory team continue to process with the registration on applicable substances falling under KKDIK, the Turkish REACH program, in line with end of 2023 deadline.

They are also undertaking registration of all applicable substances falling under the Korean REACH Program (K-REACH), in line with the deadline of the end of 2024.

Animal Testing

Compliance with regional and international regulations is non-negotiable and replying promptly and professionally to checks from the European Chemical Agency (ECHA) on our EU REACH registered substances is an integral part of our compliance commitment.

Unfortunately, many regulatory authorities still require animal testing to assess the (eco)toxicological properties of products. We are committed to eliminating or replacing this requirement by using suitable alternatives when appropriate.

Minimizing animal testing

We are currently working to develop scientific strategies that minimize unnecessary animal testing. We collaborate with contract research laboratories and universities to deliver ground-breaking and novel animal-free safety science for our products. We are active members of the Animal-Free Safety Assessment (AFSA) Collaboration and the International Collaboration on Cosmetics Safety (ICCS).

In 2022, we actively progressed novel non-animal testing approaches for several of our EU REACH registered substances, used as ingredients in personal care products. Some 10,000 animals could be saved following the successful submission of our New Approach Methods (NAMs) and Next Generation Risk Assessment (NGRA) strategies.

“It is great to work for a company that is committed to the use and deployment of novel non-animal testing approaches to ensure the safety of the chemical ingredients we manufacture. On both a personal and professional level, it was really satisfying to advance the science and challenge the status quo to avoid animal testing under the EU REACH regulation for some of these ingredients through extensive experimental testing and modelling programs throughout 2022. We collaborated closely with several critical partners to ensure the new data will be ready for submission to the European Chemicals Agency in 2023. Our team did a fantastic job, and we believe the initiative we have taken for just four of these ingredients could potentially spare approximately 10,000 animals from unnecessary testing to demonstrate safety and compliance with EU REACH.” James Dawick, Senior Toxicology and Risk Assessment Manager 

Product Stewardship

Our expert software system Intelligent Authoring® supplied by Sphera® supports our regulatory function underpinning our product stewardship. For example:

  • It facilitates the publishing of safety data sheets (SDS) in over 40 languages and generates labels for 5,000+ products
  • It is used to cross-check global chemical inventory compliance, such as the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) in the US
  • Importantly, Intelligent Authoring® holds the physical chemical (eco) toxicology, environmental-fate and hazard classification data for over 20,000 individual substances that we continually use and/or monitor

The database enables us to classify our products correctly for human and environmental health and also provides the correct handling and use advice.

Our regulatory team are involved in the early stages of all new product research and development to provide support from first concept. We are committed to minimizing environmental impact through all stages of our product development.

Through careful product stewardship we aim to deliver innovative and sustainable products with increased performance and value, without harming people or the environment.