The New Zealand Cabinet passed a health and safety reform legislation in August 2015 for better public health and risk management. The Health and Safety Reform Bill includes:
l Changes to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act through the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Amendment Act 2015.
l Replacement of the Health and Safety in Employment Act with a new Health and Safety at Work Act. This Act will take effect on 4 April 2016
Adjustment of EPA’s responsibility
The reform made some responsibility readjustment to EPA as well. The New Zealand EPA now has the power to issue EPA Notices as a legal tool for setting rules for hazardous substances. EPA Notices are approved by the EPA Board after a process that involves public consultation. They are different to Regulations, which must be approved through Cabinet. EPA may simplify the way to set new hazardous substance managing rules through issuing EPA Notices rather than depending on government legislation updates.
Demands for Hazardous Substance Management
In October, the New Zealand EPA has issued the first notice “Hazardous Substance (Importers and Manufacturers Information) Notice 2015” that requires all importers or manufacturers of Chemical products to be notified to them. The new notice demands products that have any chemical composition and are not foods or medicines will need to comply with the notice. This means that all enterprises import or manufacture hazardous substance to apply on all cosmetics, detergents, cleaning agents (including wet wipes), and children's crayons, agrochemicals should register basic information in EPA within 30 days since the first importing or manufacturing date.
This requirement does not include personal imports so anyone using the personal import exemption still has no obligation to notify at this time. This comes into force on the 19th of November with a grace period of only 30 days after that date to comply. The EPA will not post the registration document to their web site until the 19th Nov. at which time companies can register their details at no cost.
It is a new EPA Notice issued to collect hazardous import and manufacturing information. This is a breakthrough for New Zealand Hazardous substance management, which is the first time to recognize hazardous substance through central database. This is nothing like REACH and only requires all importers and manufacturers to register the fact that they are importing or manufacturing a chemical product, while REACH is applied to all chemicals and demand to submit risk assessments on chemical substance. But next year importer and manufacturer will be required to report volumes but that is the extent of it.
