DCHAS-L Archives, Feb 13 2020 - Re: [DCHAS-L] C&EN: Number of chemicals in commerce has been vastly underestimated

THANK YOU THANK YOU ALL.

Up until about 2012 (I think), CAS had a counter on their website. When I would do hazcom training, we would record the number of new chemicals registered at the beginning and again at the end to see how many thousands of new chemicals were registered while I was flapping my lips. The chemicals were being registered at a rate of roughly 20 per minute. And since the number of possible chemicals is essentially infinite, I assume they still are registered at that rate. But CAS stopped counting at 181,000,000. Now you can't even find the total number buried as a fact on their website. They, like the American Chemical Council, are selling the idea that there are very few chemicals in commerce, we already know a bunch about them, and there's no reason to bust our humps testing for toxicity.

Granted, only a fraction of those CAS registered chemicals are in commerce. And only a slightly bigger fraction of the 32 million individual chemicals available for purchase on CAS's ChemCats are in commerce. But it is a start in looking at the problem.

For a better estimate of what is in commerce, I went to the EU. In 2007 the EU required registering of all chemicals that are manufactured in amounts over a ton/year that will be used in products intended for sale in the EU. In 2008, that list had 143,000 in it and more importantly, 30,000 of those were high production volume chemicals that had no toxicity testing at all. On the theory that it is unlikely the EU uses more chemicals than we do, I put under this 143,000 as a floor under my estimated in-commerce number. And that doesn't consider chemicals manufactured in amounts less than a ton/year.

So your article tells me that the 143,000 EU registered individual chemicals is now up to 157,000. That combined with the 120,000 unknowns plus the NTP's statement that every year an estimated 2000 chemicals of unknown toxicity enter our food and products, gives trainees a vastly more realistic picture of the world we live in. And then I use a few Section 11s on common chemicals to show we know SQUAT about many of the chemicals we use every day.

Next, I point out that I wouldn't have those informative Section 11 examples if the EU had not set a 2015 deadline for SDSs after which they would reject our exports which forced the US to upgrade.

Training in either hazcom or the lab standard is a FRAUD unless we tell the whole TRUTH about the "unknowns" in this worldwide human chemical exposure experiment.

Monona

-----Original Message-----
From: DCHAS Membership Chair <membership**At_Symbol_Here**DCHAS.ORG>
To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Sent: Thu, Feb 13, 2020 8:13 am
Subject: [DCHAS-L] C&EN: Number of chemicals in commerce has been vastly underestimated

Last week, I posted information about work being conducted to develop a MINCHI standard to identify chemical mixtures reproducibly and unambiguously. There is an article in C&EN today that demonstrates the challenge of relying on less systematic approaches, such as CAS numbers. The researchers used in the CAS numbers as the identifier in this study and found that only about half of the chemicals and mixtures of chemicals registered for commercial production and use had CAS numbers that identified them.

More information can be found at:

https://cen.acs.org/policy/chemical-regulation/Number-chemicals-commerce-vastly-underestimated/98/i7

Number of chemicals in commerce has been vastly underestimated

Scientists assemble a first-ever global inventory listing triple the number of chemicals on the market as previous lists

For the first time, scientists have created a global inventory that lists more than 350,000 chemicals and mixtures of chemicals registered for commercial production and use, up to three times as many as is commonly estimated (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b06379).

BY THE NUMBERS

- 157,000: Individual chemicals identified by CAS numbers, according to the most comprehensive global inventory to date

- 75,000: Mixtures, polymers, and substances of unknown or variable composition identified by CAS numbers

- 120,000: Substances that could not be conclusively identified

Source: Environ. Sci. Technol. 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.9b06379

Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO

membership**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org

Membership chair

American Chemical Society

Division of Chemical Health and Safety

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