jueves, 26 de septiembre de 2013

Respuesta de la ECHA sobre sustancias químicas usadas en fracking en la UE


El 10 de septimbre de 2013 Ecologistas en Acción se dirigió por escrito a la ECHA con la siguiente petición:
From: Internacional Ecologistas en Accion [mailto:internacional@ecologistasenaccion.org]
Sent: 10 September 2013 16:45
To: ECHA EO
Cc: ECHA Management Board
Subject: request for information on chemical substances for hydraulic fracturing use

Dear Mr Dancet,

Under the right of access to documents in the EU treaties, as developed in Regulation 1049/2001, I am requesting from the
European Chemicals Agency documents containing the following information:

-has any company so far asked the ECHA for registration of any chemical substance to be used in the process of hydraulic fracturing?
-what substances?
-in what dates?
-what companies?

Yours truly,
Samuel Martín-Sosa

A continuación publicamos la respuesta recibida de la ECHA el 25 de septiembre de 2013:

Dear Mr Martín-Sosa Rodríguez,
In light of your access to documents application of 10 September 2013, registered under ATD 2013/38, in the context of the Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 on public access to documents, the competent service within ECHA performed a search in order to assess which data could be of relevance for you.
You requested inter alia the access to documents containing information on chemical substance to be used in the process of hydraulic fracturing.
Regarding REACH registration dossiers and the specific use “hydraulic fracturing“ ECHA would like to note that the precise application “hydraulic fracturing” goes beyond the granularity of a standardised use description in a registration dossier. Furthermore, the exposure estimation and risk characterisation suffer from the fact that case-specific exposure model predictions or measured exposure data are not available for safety assessment of hydraulic fracturing under REACH.
Based on your request, ECHA is therefore unable to identify any specific registration dossiers falling within the scope of your application.
We would however like to note that the European Commission (The DG Joint Research Centre - JRC), within the framework of the bilateral Administrative Agreement (AA) "Scientific and technical support to implementing REACH" (Framework in place between the JRC and DG Environment – DG ENV - concerning the provision of scientific and technical support to DG ENV in certain aspects of the implementation of REACH Regulation - AA No. 07.0307/2011/601224/AA/D3 of 14 September 2011), on request of DG ENV, has examined the Chemical Safety Reports of registration dossiers for a set of substances which are commonly used for hydraulic fracturing, in order to assess i.a. if the exposure scenarios could be considered relevant for shale gas operations. The work has resulted in a report, “Assessment of the use of substances in hydraulic fracturing of shale gas reservoirs under REACH”; this report has been freshly published and can be found from the JRC public repository under the following link: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/111111111/29386.
With regard to your request, this report might be of interest to you.
Furthermore, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published, within a Progress Report to a Study of Hydraulic Fracturing and Its Potential Impact on Drinking Water Resources, a list of Chemicals Identified in Hydraulic Fracturing Fluids and Wastewater. This list can be found on a dedicated website under: http://www2.epa.gov/sites/production/files/documents/hf-report20121214.pdf#page=209.
Regarding the substances identified by the European Commission, referred to above, and the substances listed by the EPA, we would like to note that you can use the ECHA Dissemination Portal to search for information on specific substances in case they have been registered under REACH; from the Dissemination Portal you can directly find information on the uses of a specific substance. You can search by entering in the search string a Chemical Name, EC number, CAS number or a IUPAC name.
We hope this helps to address your question.
Kind regards,

Access to Documents team
European Chemicals Agency