According to Dow Jones International News, the European Commission decided last week to include carbon and graphite among substances that require testing under the E.U.'s new chemical safety law - known as REACH. This verdict is based on the decision to accept an application for deletion of both carbon (CAS No. 7440-44-0) and graphite (CAS No. 7782-42-5) from ANNEX IV of REACH, which identifies substances that are exempted from the registration, evaluation and downstream user provisions of REACH on the basis that sufficient information is known about these substances so that they are considered to cause minimum risk because of their intrinsic properties (Article 2(7)(a)).

The EC had solicited submissions seeking the addition or deletion of an entry to ANNEX IV until November 2007, and subsequently subcontracted an organisation to review the received submissions (follow this link for the documentation of Criteria – Draft 2007.10.15).

According to Chemical Watch, an exemption for all forms of carbon and graphite - listed in Annex IV of the REACH Regulation at its adoption - was [on the 5^th June 2008] deleted at the proposal of the European Commission and with the hesitant support of Member States.

An EC official confirmed that the submission seeking deletion of carbon and graphite from ANNEX IV was accepted, because the CAS numbers of both substances included nanometre-sized forms of the material in question.

‘The impact of the decision on the industry is unclear,’ said Erwin Annys of the European Chemical Industry Council. ‘It's touching all forms of carbon," he said. "A number of uses that have been known for some time are coming under pressure as well.’

'We will look into the issue of whether it is really possible at all to distinguish between normal carbon and its nanoforms,’ said another EC official in an interview with Dow Jones Newswire.