The General Office of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment ("MEE") has recently issued the Measures for the Environmental Management for New Chemical Substances (Revised Draft for Comment) (the "Draft for Comment") for public consultation by August 16, 2019.
Major revisions proposed by the Draft for Comment include: 1. optimizing application requirements to ease the burden on enterprises; 2. making improvement to requirements for examination and approval and detailing the registration criteria; and 3. intensifying the in-process and ex-post regulation to boost administrative efficiency. According to the Draft for Comment, the application types and requirements for data submission are optimized, without prejudice to the requirements for environmental risk control. Specifically, for chemical substances for research use that are annually produced or imported in an amount of smaller than 100 kilograms, these measures do not apply to such substances which are previously governed by record-filing; as to chemical substances that are annually produced or imported in an amount of smaller than one tonne or fall into the category of polymer of low concern, they will be subject to record-filing, instead of being declared under the simplified method as before, and enterprises do not have to perform tests and may straightly carry out activities, after submitting all required record-filing materials.