Japan to Publish Revised Risk Assessment Methods for Priority Assessment Chemical Substances (PACs) under the Chemical Substance Control Law (CSCL)

On July 15, 2022, three Japanese ministries held an online conference during which they announced they had completed revisions to the methods for screening and risk assessment of priority assessment chemical substances (PACs) under the chemical substance control law (CSCL). The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW), Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), and Ministry of Environment (MoE) are expected to publish the revised technical guidelines and relevant documents in September.

In the first session of the conference, they talked about the risk assessment methods for PACs as well as the revision to screening assessment method; in the second session, they discussed and deliberated of new chemical substances.

Here are the documents submitted for deliberation in this conference:

• Ecological risk assessment report (Draft);
• Results of acrylic acid in ecological risk assessment (Primary) Tier III (Draft);
• The 3rd revision to the screening assessment (Draft);
• The 2nd revision to the screening assessment under the CSCL (Draft);
• The 3rd revision to concepts of PACs screening assessment (Draft); and
• Risk assessment methods of PACs;

Generally speaking, PACs need to be rated as “high risk”, “medium risk” or “low risk” via screening assessment and those rated as high risks will be assessed at top priority.

PACs can also be divided into three categories based on their purposes, they are:

• PACs subject to health risk assessment;
• PACs subject to ecological risk assessment; and
• PACs subject to both health and ecological risk assessment.

Chemical substances may also be reclassified even after they are designated as PACs when new harmful information is obtained.

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