The Russian system of chemicals management - Bef-de.org

Editorial
Hazardous substances are a serious threat for human health and the environment and
particularly when reaching water bodies or seas, their management is mostly not anymore
subject to responsibility of one state alone. While inside the European Union, many
processes are on-going to streamline the activities in the member states for the protection
of the environment from the dangers of hazardous substances, the cooperation with
non-member states, with different legislation on hazardous substances, as well as own
interests causes additional challenges for a joint protection of a shared water body. A
particularly vulnerable sea is the Baltic Sea — with a unique eco-system but vulnerable
to pollution due to its special geographic and hydro-morphological conditions being connected
to the ocean only through the extremely narrow Danish belts which hinder the
water exchange — surrounded by eight member states of the EU and the Russian Federation
taking part in implementation of agreed EU environmental regulations.
Russian classification of hazards of chemicals substances differs largely from the EU,
especially with regard to environmental hazards which are not addressed by Russian
regulation. There is a lack of knowledge among the Russian scientific community and
other stakeholders about the environmental concerns as for instances laid down in the
EU Water Framework Directive and as background motivation for selecting certain substances
under REACH. However, also vice versa there is a lack of knowledge at EU
stakeholders about the current Russian hazardous substance regulatory frame and related
practices to reduce and/or control hazardous substances uses and emissions.
Efficient control and management of hazardous substances, however, can only be
achieved, if both sides speak the same language. As this document will show, there are
many seeming similarities between the European Union and the Russian Federation,
however, the background and the details are different, and over the past decades European
Union policy makers have gone many steps further, e.g. acting preventively and not
to wait until scientific evidence proves the danger of a certain substance, just to mention
one crucial point. Although, there are clear signs, as we will see further on, that the current
legal framework in Russia in the process of fundamental revision, it will certainly still
remain in force for some years, and therefore in the following chapters, the current legal
background and its procedures of management of hazardous substances and ensuring
chemical safety will be explained for audience from the European Union, who seek for
cooperation with Russian stakeholders from public administrations and business. The
European in mind of the authors are respresentative of competent authorities of EU
members, as well as European institutions seeking for cooperation on reduction of certain
hazardous substances (e.g. to the Baltic Sea environment), business partners from
trade and industry in need of understanding the Russian hazard classification system.
The document would like to provide background information for the EU reader to enable
them to understand the conceptual thinking behind the current Russian system of chemicals
saftety. It is not meant to be a gap analysis of the Russian system in comparison the
8 | The Russian System of Chemicals Management