REACH is a new European regulation concerning the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals. Although this is a European regulation, enterprises in non-EU community including Japanese industrial sectors that directly or indirectly export their products to EU region have also been faced to accommodate its requirements.
One of the reasons of the non-EU community involvement is that some certain chemicals such as SVHC (Substances of Very High Concern) "in a product" are also scoped as the regulation and information about the use of such chemicals in a product are needed to be gathered. This can be, basically, achieved by communications among almost whole supply chain of the product including inside and outside of EU.
This article will provide basic ideas of REACH and possible impacts by REACH to the circumstance surrounding rubber products.