Sealing products and legal requirements - Parker Hannifin ...

aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) have
attracted considerable attention as
they are considered to be highly carcinogenic.
Naphtenic or even aliphatic
plasticisers, however, do not have the
strong plasticising effects of the aromatic
types which have come under
criticism. Nevertheless, more and
more specifications of elastomeric assembly
components are now limiting
the permissible PAH content.
This is done based on the GADSL
(Global Automotive Declarable Substance
List) and the list published by
the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) of PAH in Table 1.
Since January 2008 elastomeric assembly
components have had to be
tested for their PAH content if they are
installed in equipment bearing the
GS (= Tested Safety) mark. The testing
procedures and limits by categories
have been published in the ZEK document
01-08, “Testing and Evaluation
of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons
(PAH) for Awarding of GS Marks”. For
seals, the limits of category 3 – materials
with foreseeable skin contact up
to 30 s (short-term skin contact) or no
skin contact – with nenzo[a]pyren <
20 mg/kg and total 16 PAH according
to EPA < 200 mg/kg apply. For the automotive
industry, limits of < 20 mg/
kg for each of the eight GADSL listed
PAH apply. In some cases, however,
customer requirements clearly exceed
these limits.
Parker has not been using plasticisers
with carcinogenic potential for years.
To confirm this, various materials
containing carbon black and plasti-
Compounds Substances Benzo[a]pyrene 8 PAK 16 PAK
Requirement ZEK 01-08
GADSL
GADSL ZEK 01-08
Category 3
Required < 20 mg/kg < 160 mg/kg < 200 mg/kg
N3584-85 Actual < BG < BG 8,2 mg/kg
N3512-90 Actual < BG < BG 1,6 mg/kg
V9153-70 Actual < BG 0,2 mg/kg 2,7 mg/kg
Table 2: Content of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in
Parker-Prädifa Compounds (Detection Limit, Determination Limit = 0.1 mg/kg).
cisers have been tested for their PAH
content according to EPA and GADSL
by an independent specialised laboratory
of the DEKRA organisation.
Some of the results are summarised
in Table 2.
The tests in Table 2 document that the
PAH content of the compounds tested
is clearly below the required limits.
This shows that safe products can be
manufactured and supplied through
skilful selection of raw materials.
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