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News list

27/02/2010 New ETAD Indian office

The ETAD Indian office, created in order to intensify the contact with local companies and authorities and enhance ETAD presence in India, has been officially registered and will start its activities immediately. The special goal of the office is to provide taylored assistance for any emerging issue regarding the ecological and toxicological properties of colorants as well as offer its expertise to legislators for the developing of new or updated Indian regulations affecting colorants.

16/02/2010 REACH descriptors for the textile industry

A table of descriptors for the textile industries, based on the ECHA “Guidance on information requirements and CSA”, has been developed by a group of representatives of interested European associations under the coordination of TEGEWA. ETAD participated to the German subgroup of the project, which combined the inputs of German, Belgian and Italian textile associations into the final descriptors. ETAD will distribute the descriptors table among its companies as a common tool for their REACH activities. Further details on the project can be found on the Cefic website.

01/02/2010 Value Chain Team

A clear and well organized communication through the value chain is a crucial issue not only for companies which have to prepare dossiers for the REACH registration, but in general for every manufacturer. In many cases, included colorants applications, the information flow has to move through different important players, each of which needs to be addressed accordingly to its specific exigencies. Furthermore, inputs coming from regulatory bodies, scientific sources or non-profit organizations (e.g. consumers associations) have to be integrated in the communication process.  To address this issue, ETAD is working in the Cefic Value Chain Team, a group of associations with the goal to find common effective strategies for managing such a complex interaction and provide complete, clearly understandable information to all interested parties.

15/01/2010 Nanomaterials update

After the publication of its position paper on pigments and nanomaterials, ETAD has been establishing contacts and starting collaboration with different authorities and groups in order to contribute with its expertise to a scientific based evaluation of the affected substances.  With the debate on exact definition and risk assessment of nanosized materials going on, it is important to clarify on one hand which parameters justify a classification as “new substance”, on the other hand how a specific characterization of nanomaterials in terms of physico-chemical as well as toxicological properties should be carried on.

Fruitful meetings have already taken place with the Danish and Swiss EPAs and within the framework of the Technical Commission Pigments – Nano (a specific working group of the Verband der Mineralfarbenindustrie). A crucial point emerged during the meetings has been the need of more accurate methods for the determination of the exact nanoparticles content of a sample with a wide size range, and ETAD is currently collecting information on the latest developments in the analytics of nanomaterials and discussing their application to the specific case of organic pigments.

16/10/2009 ETAD Position Paper on Nanomaterials

ETAD recently joined the ongoing discussion on nanomaterials, in order to clarify the risk associated to organic pigments due to their variable content of nanoparticles. On the basis of the VdMi position paper from 26 March 2009, ETAD developed its specific position paper for pigments, which can be found in our Publications page.