By Lynn L. Bergeson and Carla N. Hutton
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) announced in the August 16, 2023, issue of ECHA Weekly that to support substitution toward safer chemicals, it has published information on the main alternatives to substances requiring authorization under Annex XIV of the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation. ECHA notes that companies applying for an authorization under REACH must provide information on potential alternatives to the Annex XIV substance(s) they use. This information is presented in the Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) submitted as part of their authorization application. ECHA publishes the public version of the AoA on its website. ECHA states that it extracted the main information on these alternatives from AoAs, and the information is available in the Shortlisted Alternatives Table. ECHA states that if a field is left blank, either the applicant has claimed the information as confidential or it has not identified corresponding information. The file contains data available as of June 30, 2023.