On December 13, 2023, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) released the 10th enforcement report of the REACH Enforcement Altar, which focused on consumer products, checking its compliance with the REACH regulation, POPS regulation, RoHS directive and toy directive related to hazardous substance restrictions, as well as the transmission of SVHC information in articles, and inspected a total of 2,407 products in 26 countries.
The overall non-compliance rate of the 2,407 products inspected by law enforcement was 18%, the failure rate of article type products was 20%, and the failure rate of mixture-type products was 9%. Inspection data shows that the content of harmful chemicals such as lead, phthalates, and short-chain chlorinated paraffins is too high in products for consumers.
Hazardous Substance Restriction Compliance
In the enforcement inspection of compliance with the restriction of hazardous substances, the RoHS directive had the highest non-compliance rate, with 49% of the 329 products inspected not meeting the requirements. The second is the REACH regulation restrictions, with 13% of the 2,038 inspected products not meeting the requirements, the third is the toy directive, with 10% of the 218 inspected products not meeting the requirements, and finally the POPS regulation, with 9% of the 645 inspected products not meeting the requirements. The most common types of non-compliant products are:
Electrical devices such as electric toys, chargers, cables, headphones. Fifty-two percent of these products were found to be non-compliant, mainly due to lead in solder, phthalates in soft plastic parts, and cadmium in circuit boards.
Sports equipment such as yoga mats, cycling gloves, ball products, and rubber handles for sports equipment. Eighteen per cent of these products were found to be non-compliant, mainly due to excessive levels of SCCPs and phthalates in soft plastics and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in rubber.
Toys such as bathing water toys, dolls, costumes, play mats, plastic dolls, decompression toys, outdoor toys, shaqi and childcare products. 16% of non-electric toys were found to be non-compliant, mainly due to the discovery of phthalates in soft plastic parts and other restricted substances such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, nickel, boron or nitrosamines.
Fashion products such as handbags, jewelry, belts, shoes, and clothes. Fifteen percent of these products were non-compliant due to the presence of phthalates, lead and cadmium.
REACH SVHC
A total of 589 article types of products were inspected for the REACH SVHC's messaging obligations, i.e. the requirements of Article 33(1) of the REACH Regulation, and 3 out of 10 products that met the conditions for the fulfillment of the information transfer obligation were found to have failed to comply with the obligation to provide the required SVHC information to their professional recipients, with a non-compliance rate of 30%.
Illegal products ** country
The results of law enforcement inspections showed higher non-conformance rates for products originating from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) or **unknown, at 20% and 21%, respectively. It is worth noting that the main ** country of non-compliant products from outside the EEA is China, and among these non-compliant products outside the EEA, 98% of Chinese products do not comply with the RoHS directive, and 95% of Chinese products do not comply with POPS regulations。In addition, most of the products that inspectors suspect are unknown may also come from China.
Enforcement Measures
Following the inspection, national law enforcement has taken a series of enforcement measures, including verbal or written warnings, fines, criminal prosecutions, destruction of products, and more. On the other hand, most of the offending companies have also taken voluntary action, for example, removing the offending products from their platforms, and recalling the products.
Future law enforcement dynamics
At the beginning of December 2023, the ECHA Executive announced the 2024-2025 work plan on the ECHA official website, which identified the enforcement priorities for the 2024-2025 EU level REACH, CLP, PICS, POPS and BPR (Biocidal Products Regulation). These measures include actions in areas where there is a higher risk of non-compliance, such as online sales, importation of goods, and compliance with classification and labelling or restriction requirements. In addition, the work plan has also identified imported products as the focus of inspection in the twelfth joint enforcement action (REF-12), which will be inspected in 2024 and issued an enforcement report in 2025
*：echa、ct