Shame! (Toxicology and clichés...)

It is very hard to fight against clichés. It is hard because our own perception can't be objective and it is fully oriented to confirm what we have previously learned. Our brain is very stubborn.

With clichés, this brain gear works even better. Along your daily life you may find tons of perfectly honest politicians but, if you ever find a crooked one, your brain makes you say: "All politicians are the same, everyone of them cheats".

Accidents statistics clearly say women drive cars better than men. The dishonest people rates are equal between lawyers, bankers and councilmen of urbanism than between average people but the cliché stored in the hard disk of our brains thinks in the opposite direction.

We have been working with transnational companies for years and, one of the clichés we have been fighting against is that one which says Spaniard are reckless, do not plan and try to fix everything in the last moment by improvisation.

After all this years participating in REACH's framework, we have seen similar level of efficiency among French, German, British and Spanish companies, engineering and consultancies.

We are still convinced but, some days ago, suddenly, our own Public Administration, the Spanish Public Service, stubbornly and surprisingly persisted in confirming the clichés... once again. And we, ashamed, only were able to try to explain to the corporate services of our affiliated companies the situation, trying not to use words as "blunder", "incompetent" or "absurdity", precisely, avoiding confirming the cliché.

We started very early insisting our companies to move forward with the procedures before the National Institute of Toxicology. In January, 2002, we sent this circular  letter explaining that time procedures and advising: "It is foreseeable that, given the resources available to the SIT and the avalanche of registration applications in case this obligation is incorporated, AVEQ recommends that all marketed products be registered as soon as possible"

We have seen all predictions we made have been fulfilled one by one and, 15 year latter, the process was going to culminate last June, 1st, with the coming into force of the compulsory registration of all industrial mixtures classified as dangerous. Thousands, maybe millions, of formulas, with their SDSs and labels, should have been uploaded with the on-line application created ex-profeso for this purpose. We, and all the industry with us, had the premonition that the application was going to colapse at the precise moment.

But the “colapse”, the real “colapse”, the true and genuine Spanish blunder came, two days before the end of the term when…  maybe, better, I’ll let Borja Fernández Almau, our Product Stewardship Manager explain it, pasting one of the email he was forced to write. This one sent to an important Italian chemical company:


Hello Giovanna, let me try to explain the unintelligible legal situation we are suffering here and see the options we have.

Approximately a couple of months ago, the National Institute of Toxicology, Spanish anti-poison centre (INTCF) changed its management; apparently, the new director joined in with the concern of not being able to handle an expected massive number of registrations. Last Tuesday, May 30th, we received from FEIQUE (Spanish Chemical Industry Federation) a draft regulation where a modification of the obligation to register was proposed as follows: whereas for hazardous mixtures for consumer or professional use the same conditions and deadlines prevail, for industrial mixtures there is a delay in the obligation to register up until 2024.

This delay is not automatic for every product, a kind of "pre-registration" is required to adhere to the new deadline; this simplified procedure requires sending the SDS and the label (not composition nor other data). Besides, no fees are to be paid.

So, for your legal entity in Spain there is no choice, as long as the applications were filed, the fees paid and the registration numbers assigned the procedure is already closed, but for your company in Netherlands, we still can choose, there are two options:

- We finish the process: We could upload the fee receipt you sent yesterday, so the mixtures will be fully registered (and the INTCF telephone can be used in your SDS). Main problem is that you are supposed to update the sheets in case of modifications.

- We stop the process of registrations: We are still on time to cancel the applications not uploading the fee receipts. We could ask the fees to be reimbursed and then we would send the SDS and labels through the simplified registration. In this case you save the fees but we will be in a non-compliance situation till the new regulation come into force.  The draft regulation is still under consultation, its approval is expected by the end of this month. In any case, taking under consideration that the Ministry is making a whole mess out of this matter, I am unable to assure the achievement of these deadlines.

Let me know your thoughts,
Borja


As summary: all diligent producers, not have only paid the fees for nothing, they will have to pay fees for every modification they’ll make in their formulas for the next seven years. Whoever has looked the other way, whoever had been negligent, will have seven years more of tranquillity… Once again, due the Spanish clichés serious companies lose, crooked companies win.



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