More Sophisticated Regulatory Regime of Chemicals to be Established by 2015

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection’s “12th Five-Year Plan for the Environmental Risk Control on Chemicals” has blueprinted the chemicals and companies/industries to be monitored in the near future. However, it will never be an easy task for the practical implementation since many rules of the game need to be formulated or perfected during the five year plan. The following is a list of the future policy-making initiatives drawn from the official 12th Five Year Plan: Establishment of the “Guidance of Environmental Risk Assessment for Chemicals”; Regularly release of the “List of phased-out chemical substances”; Update the “Catalogue of Encouraged Substitutes to Toxic and Hazardous Raw Materials”; Formulated the “Inventory of backward technology”; Elevated the access to relevant industries and sectors; Enact the “Measures for the Environmental Management of Chemicals”; Regularly publish the “Compulsory List of Companies under Clean Production Verification”; Formulate the environmental standards and other industry standards of chemical pollutants of PBT, vPvB, CRM and environmental hormones; The PFOS, NPs, and phthalates and other chemicals under particular prevention and control will be substituted or phased out The MEP will push forward environmental management registration of new chemicals and hazardous chemicals. The first round of registration on hazardous chemicals is expected to be finished by the end of 2015.