Risk management of chemicals

This document provides a synthesis of the various risk management approaches and options that are used by OECD member country government chemical regulatory programmes to manage the risk of chemicals. The scope of the document focuses on the management of risks of industrial and consumer chemicals, i.e., chemicals which are not covered by specific legislations such as pesticides or pharmaceuticals.

This report is a cross-country analysis of BAT Reference Documents for three selected industrial sectors; thermal power plants (TPP), cement production and textile manufacturing. It examines seven BREFs for TPP, five BREFs for cement production, and six BREFs for textile manufacturing from countries/organisations, including China, India, Japan, South Korea, the US, the EU, Belgium (Flanders), and the World Bank.

On 3 February 2020, the OECD organised a workshop to foster a discussion on real-world policy misalignment at the chemicals/waste interface in order to identify and review potential, or already applied, solutions. In order to support this discussion, case studies were submitted and addressed different sectors and issues clustered in three themes to facilitate discussion for the workshop: Facilitating Material Recovery; Managing Environmental, Health and Safety Risks from the Use of Recycled Materials containing Hazardous Substances; and Aligning Chemicals and Waste Legislations for Managing Hazardous Chemicals.