Bisphenol restriction proposal withdrawn
bluesign proactively monitors and restricts substances of concern to help its system partners to be prepared for upcoming regulations.
The European Chemicals Agency ECHA informed on August 30th that:
“The German authorities have withdrawn their proposal to restrict bisphenols that have endocrine disrupting properties to the environment from the opinion-making process by ECHA’s scientific committees. They intend to re-submit an updated proposal to ECHA once they have considered the information submitted by stakeholders during the six-month consultation and reworked the scope of the restriction.”
The restriction proposal on bisphenols is a hot topic due to very low limits and a dynamic link to other regulations. Whenever a bisphenol substance is classified as endocrine disruptor for the environment in one of these regulations, the whole bisphenol restriction applies automatically to this substance.
bluesign informed its stakeholders during the Chemical Expert Group (CEG) in April and the bluesign® ACADEMY webinar in June 2023 about this topic and the high relevance for textile and leather industry.
bluesign proactively monitors and restricts substances of concern to help its system partners to be prepared for upcoming regulations. Therefore, the bisphenol restriction proposal has been considered in the 2023 revision process for the bluesign restricted substances lists BSSL and BSBL, but the very strict limits of the proposal have not been implemented.
The withdrawal of the restriction proposal has no effect on the existing limits for bisphenols at bluesign. The risk assessments of the single bisphenols are based on the current scientific information and remain unchanged. As announces at the CEG, chemical products containing >1000 mg/kg bisphenol S will be removed from the bluesign® FINDER on December 1st, 2023, based on the new harmonized classification.
The delay in the legislation process might increase the time until more stringent limits must be applied and offers more time to find good alternatives
