Five chemicals officially included in the list of hazardous chemicals

Recently, the Ministry of Emergency Management, in conjunction with multiple ministries, officially announced the inclusion of five new types of high-risk chemicals in the "Catalogue of Hazardous Chemicals (2015 Edition)" for unified management, marking the expansion of China's hazardous chemical supervision scope and the comprehensive upgrade of the supervision of the entire chain of hazardous chemical production, operation, storage, transportation, import and export. The addition and adjustment of this catalog is an important safety control measure taken by relevant departments based on recent safety accident cases in the chemical industry, analysis of chemical hazard characteristics, and actual import and export trade circulation. It also sounds the alarm for compliant operation for logistics enterprises engaged in hazardous chemical shipping, land transportation, customs clearance, warehousing and distribution.

Note: The image is from the website of the Ministry of Emergency Management of the People's Republic of China

The Catalogue of Hazardous Chemicals has always been the core basis for determining the hazardous properties of chemicals, classifying control levels, formulating storage and transportation standards, and obtaining business and transportation qualifications in China. All chemicals listed in the catalogue must strictly comply with a series of special laws and regulations on safety production, operation and sales, storage and stacking, road transportation, international shipping, entry and exit customs declaration, etc. It is strictly prohibited to carry out related business without corresponding qualifications. With the rapid development of fine chemicals, pharmaceutical intermediates, and new synthetic materials industries, the circulation of various niche chemicals and new reagents continues to rise. Some high-risk chemicals that have not been included in the control have caused multiple safety accidents such as production explosions, storage fires, and transportation leaks due to their unstable nature, flammability, explosiveness, and strong reactivity. This has resulted in serious casualties and property losses, and the loopholes in industry safety supervision urgently need to be filled.

The five newly added hazardous chemicals under control this time are 3-chloropropyne, 2-iodoylbenzoic acid, 2-diazoacetoacetic acid p-nitrobenzyl ester, methylsulfonyl azide, and 2-nitro-3-methylbenzoic acid. These five types of chemicals are widely used in high-end chemical fields such as pharmaceutical synthesis, pesticide research and development, fine chemical preparation, and organic synthesis reactions. Their market circulation has been increasing year by year, and they all have extremely strong hazardous characteristics. Some categories are highly sensitive to high temperature, impact, friction, and acidic and alkaline environments, and are prone to dangerous situations such as decomposition and explosion, combustion and heat release, and toxic gas volatilization. Daily storage and long-distance transportation are extremely risky, and they are also the core materials involved in chemical safety accidents in many places in recent years.

After the new regulations are officially implemented, all business entities involved in these five types of chemicals in the market must fully complete compliance rectification work. Production enterprises need to improve their safety production processes, verify safety protection facilities at production sites, and update product safety technical manuals and hazard disclosure labels in a timely manner; Trade distribution enterprises need to verify their own business categories, supplement corresponding hazardous chemical business qualifications, and strictly prohibit the purchase and sale of unqualified products; The storage park needs to separately allocate dedicated high-risk chemical storage areas, implement hardware facilities such as ventilation, temperature control, fire and explosion prevention, and isolation protection, and establish a special inventory registration ledger.

For the cross-border import and export and international maritime logistics industries, the impact of this policy adjustment is particularly far-reaching. Enterprises engaged in exporting chemical products and international hazardous chemical shipping freight forwarding must immediately verify the name, CAS number, and chemical properties of the goods when accepting cargo booking, packing and shipping, and customs declaration business. They must accurately determine the hazard classification and maritime hazard level, strictly follow the requirements of international maritime hazardous regulations to standardize packaging, paste hazard labels, and prepare compliant maritime appraisal reports and dangerous goods declaration materials. In the past, illegal operations such as general cargo declaration, simple packaging transportation, and concealing dangerous attributes for shipment will be fully restricted. Customs inspection, port security check, and shipping company document review standards will be tightened simultaneously. Once false or missed reports are made, not only will the goods face the risk of container detention, return, and port detention, but related enterprises will also face severe punishments such as administrative penalties and qualification verification.
The relevant regulatory authorities have clearly set a buffer period for rectification, and relevant enterprises within their jurisdiction must complete all rectification work such as qualification changes, chemical information registration, safety training for employees, and optimization of storage and transportation processes within the prescribed time limit. Related enterprises need to proactively sort out their existing business sources, comprehensively investigate the shipping categories of cooperative customers, promote customer policies in advance, assist customers in improving various compliance documents, optimize hazardous chemical packaging plans and transportation routes, and avoid compliance risks and safety transportation hazards from the source.

Safety is the foundation for the stable development of the chemical industry and hazardous chemical logistics industry, and policy expansion and control are not only constraints but also important opportunities for the standardized development of the industry. We will strictly implement various safety control measures, adopt standardized, normalized, and specialized operation models, adapt to new industry regulatory requirements, jointly maintain the stable and orderly development of the chemical circulation market, and build a solid safety protection line for the entire hazardous chemical industry chain.

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