Workers’ safety labelling for chemicals

Committee:
Materials
status:
No progress
Published:
When products are not registered in Japan, despite having a CAS number, MHLW does not consider the actual nature of the substance but applies a warning label based either on the individual components or on the most similar substance that is already registered in Japan. This can lead to compounds being unnecessarily labelled as dangerous, eg. alumina. There is also a lack of information in English.

Recommendations

  • MHLW should give due consideration to compounds not currently registered in Japan that nevertheless have an international CAS number.
  • MHLW should provide proper information on how importing companies should comply with its regulations.
  • EU and Japan should better harmonise this area to avoid the need for different labelling.