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
Sent: 10 September 2013 16:45
To: ECHA EO
Cc: ECHA Management Board
Subject: request for information on chemical substances for hydraulic fracturing use
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