Substitution within the Danish printing industry

The implementation of the EU REACH regulation will most probably promote substitution within sectors handling a lot of different chemicals like the printing industry. With the aim of being at the cutting edge of this development the Danish EPA together with the Danish printing industry and IPU are running a substitution project. A major part of the work has been mapping the presence of chemicals which are potential candidates for substitution (e.g. PBT, CMR, vPvB, EDS) within the Danish printing industry and this work was recently finished. The mapping comprises a combination of a literature study and an investigation of the actual (2007) presence of candidate substances at 15 Danish printing houses including the examination of almost 900 MSDS’s (i.e. products). Furthermore, a focused search in the Danish Product Register has been included. More than 150 of the mapped substances are candidates for substitution according to Danish legislation (List of Undesirable Substances) and about 40 of these substances fulfil one or more of the criteria (e.g. CMR, EDS) for the REACH Annex XIV candidate list (authorisation). Three substances (phthalates) out of the first and recently published Annex XIV candidate list (in total 15 substances) were found in the Danish printing industry. This paper presents the results of the mapping of chemical candidates and the first results on preparing for actual substitutions.