Who Registration, Evaluation, Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) affects

American companies under the impression that they will not be affected by this law because it derives from EU legislation are sorely mistaken. If you are one of them, you would do well to adjust your attitude immediately. In fact, REACH should assume the status of a critical business matter that will affect the operations of your company, your vendors, and your customers across whole enterprises.

REACH is so important that Robert Matthews, a REACH authority and partner in the Washington-based law firm McKenna, Long & Aldridge, has recommended that industry executives “elevate REACH compliance from the environment, health, and safety departments in [their] firms to the level of a business development-unit reporting directly to the company president.” Recently, Dupont assigned top-level executives to manage REACH compliance and processes — an indication of how serious and important this issue is to businesses today.

Supervision from the top is necessary, Matthews says, because compliance with REACH by U.S. businesses will require executives to make decisions that will significantly affect their “product selection, exports, suppliers and customers and use of products by customers.” Those businesses that fail to preregister their products with the ECA in the six-month window between June and December of 2008 risk losing their phase-in status during the subsequent authorization period. If that happens, their products cannot be brought to market, because continued production or import of chemicals and substances that are not preregistered will be illegal. The ramifications don’t end there, however. Your substance only needs to be listed as a candidate for blacklisting under REACH for it to lose status as a marketable product on a global level. In such cases, companies need to have alternative products ready to go.