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Public Consultation on Code of Practice for the Chemical Agent Regulations
1. Summary
In accordance with Section 60 of the 2005 Safety Health and Welfare at Work Act, the Health and Safety Authority invites comments from interested parties on the attached draft revision of the 2016 Code of Practice for the Chemical Agents Regulations. The HSA requests that comments on the draft are submitted to consultation@hsa.ie before close of business on Friday, 20 April 2018.
2. Background
The draft 2018 Code of Practice for the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Chemical Agents) Regulations 2001 (as amended):- updates and replaces the “2016 Code of Practice for the Chemical Agents Regulations)”, based on the latest available relevant scientific information, and
- fulfils the commitment as stated in the foreword of the 2016 Code of Practice to update the Code of Practice periodically, where appropriate.
- Schedule 1 has been updated to take account of Schedule 2 to the 2016 Code of Practice, which listed intended changes to introduce a new OELV or to change an existing OELV.
- Schedule 1 has been updated to adopt new Indicative OELVs from EU Commission Directive (4th list of IOELVs) 2017/164/EU.
- Schedule 1 has been updated to include new Binding OELVs following an amendment to the Carcinogens and Mutagens Directive (CMD) by EU Directive 2017/2398.
- All updates included in Schedule 1 of the 2018 Code of Practice are in bold for ease of reference
- Schedule 2 has been updated to include possible changes to current OELV values and new entrants for the next iteration of the Code of Practice
- Schedule 3 - the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) Numbers Index. It is proposed to remove Schedule 3 as CAS Numbers and EC numbers for chemical substances can be obtained from a number of online sources such as the CAS registry and the ECHA Dissemination portal.
- Identified errata from the 2016 Code of Practice have been addressed
3. Public Consultation
The draft 2018 Code of Practice for the Chemical Agent Regulations was approved to go for public consultation by the Board of the Health and Safety Authority on 9 March 2018.
Having assessed inputs received through the consultation process, the Board will then consider the document for final approval. It is intended to publish the approved Code of Practice by August 2018.
4. Changes in this edition
An Explanatory Note and Analysis document has been developed to explain the key changes in this revised Code of Practice for the Chemical Agents Regulations.