What is the difference between existing chemicals and new chemicals? Will both require testing?
Existing chemicals and new chemicals are the two types of chemicals defined under regulation 793/93/EC. The dividing line of these two types of chemicals is September 1981. Chemicals placed on the market before and after such date are named respectively as existing substances and new substances. There are a total of 100,106 existing substances and around 4,300 new substances to date. Under present EU legislation, only the new substances are required to be tested and notified to the authorities before being placed on the market. For existing substances, the European Commission and Member States have so far prioritized 141 high volume chemicals for assessment since 1993, surprisingly only about 27% of them have been completed in more than 10 years time. Amount all high volume chemicals only 3% have been fully tested, the others are either with little data or with no testing at all. These figures show that a lot of chemicals are now being used without safety information and implies the de
