Norit Activated Carbon

EXTENDED SAFETY DATAS HEETS:IDENTIFIED USES and SAFE USE INFORMATION

General

Currently we are publishing new extended Safety Data Sheets for our activated carbon products.

As per the REACH regulation, our new extended Safety Data Sheets contain an Annex with Identified Uses and their corresponding safe use information (exposure scenarios).

Our description of Identified Uses follows the system presented by the ECHA in the document “Guidance on information requirements and chemical safety assessment, Chapter R.12: Use descriptor system", final version of 26 March 2010. Link: http://guidance.echa.europa.eu/docs/guidance_document/information_requirements_r12_en.pdf

We have endeavoured to make our extended Safety Data Sheets user-friendly by making them transparently structured and compact.

Activated carbons as such or in mixtures

Identified Uses may involve activated carbon as such (fresh carbon), or activated carbon mixed with other substances (e.g. adsorbed impurities, catalysts).

The Identified Uses in most cases cover both 'as such' and 'mixed'. Also when handling mixtures these usually contain a large proportion of activated carbon. The safe use information is based on activated carbon as such.

Wet Powdered Activated Carbon

A special case is formed by wet Powdered Activated Carbon (wet PAC). Dry or slightly moist PAC has a high dustiness. However, when the carbon is really wet (water being present between the particles, as in a wet filter cake or in a slurry), this greatly reduces the dustiness of the powder. Therefore, for wet PAC a separate set of Identified Uses with their corresponding safe use information is presented.

For Granular Activated Carbons, dry or wet have little difference in dustiness, so no separation between dry and wet has been made.

Structure of the Indentified Use information

We present our Identified Uses in five tables:

[A – C]: Industrial Uses (SU 3) :
	[A]: Industrial Uses - End uses (relevant for most of our customers, therefore presented first)
	[B]: Industrial Uses - Formulation (includes catalyst manufacture and repacking)
	[C]: Industrial Uses - Manufacturing of Activated Carbon (including re-activation)
[D]: Professional Uses (SU 22)
[E]: Consumer Uses (SU 21)

Note: This description is based on the life cycle, but we present first what is important to most of our customers. Most of our customers manufacture a product, thereby using activated carbon as purification agent. Their activated carbon uses are End-Uses of Activated Carbon and thus presented table [A].

Use Descriptors

As per ECHA’s Guidance, chapter R.12.5.3, for the Identified Uses the following Use Descriptors are to be reported:

For Industrial Uses and Professional Uses:

The Process Category (PROC).
The Environmental Release Category (ERC).
Optional: the Sector of Use (SU) and/or the market sector (described by PC) may be specified, when these lead to different exposures. For Activated Carbon these are not relevant here (see below) and therefore not specified. This means that all SU and PC codes are covered.
The Article Code (AC), if relevant

For Consumer Uses:

The Product Category (PC).
The Environmental Release Category (ERC).
The Article Code (AC), if relevant.

Note: We have concluded that for Industrial uses and Professional Uses, a specification of SU and/or PC is not functional for our products and their uses. The following examples clarify this.

Example (I): Powdered Activated Carbon (PAC) is used to purify many different substances. The SU can be e.g. SU4 (manufacture of food products), SU8 (manufacture of bulk chemicals), or SU9 (Manufacture of fine chemicals), and many more. However, in the Identified Use: “Emptying a bag of PAC into a treatment tank”, the exposure to PAC dust by workers or the environment does not depend on what is being treated in the tank.
So, the use of an SU code is not functional.

Example (II): Powdered Activated Carbon (PAC) can be a purification agent (PC2: Adsorbent), or a catalyst (PC0 with UCN code P15500). However, when a bag of the material is emptied into a tank, the exposure to PAC dust by workers or the environment does not depend on how the PAC will function in the tank. So, the use of a PC code is not functional.

Note: SU 3, 21, and 22 are however implicitly used as this is directly related to the separation in Industrial, Professional, and Consumers uses.

Identified Uses for activated carbons are of course described from the activated carbon perspective. For instance, if a product is manufactured industrially using activated carbon as purification agent, the corresponding activated carbon Identified Uses have the code ERC 4 (“Industrial use of processing aids....”) and not ERC 1 (“Manufacture of substances”) as the activated carbon is used as processing aid and not manufactured itself here.

Basis for the safe use information

Based on all available data, the Activated Carbon Consortium has concluded that the only potential adverse health effects associated with Activated Carbons could be associated with the inhalation of dust. To determine these effects, inhalation repeated dose toxicity and reproductive toxicity effects can be determined by animal testing.

To minimize animal testing, in the REACH dossiers submitted for activated carbons, waivers have been included for the tests for repeated dose toxicity and reproductive toxicity from Annex VIII. As per ECHA Fact Sheet (ref. ECHA-09-FS-05-EN), these tests may be waived provided that these endpoints will be covered later by higher level tests proposed in the REACH dossiers for approval by ECHA.

In the mean time Interim Risk Management Measures (Interim RMMs) must be presented in the REACH dossiers and included in the eSDSs. We have based the Interim RMMs on an Interim inhalation Derived No Effect Level (DNEL) set by expert judgement at 3 mg/m3 (dust in air).

CHESAR software was used:

To calculate the dust levels associated with the various Indentified Uses,
To compare these dust levels to the Interim DNEL,
Where the calculated dust level is higher than the Interim DNEL: to see which Risk Management Measures are effective to reduce the dust concentration to values not exceeding the DNEL.

The results are detailed in the REACH dossiers, and summarized in the Annexes to the Safety Data Sheets.

Safe Use Information presented in the eSDS

As result of the above, the Annex to the extended Safety Data Sheet (eSDS) includes information on how to use the product safely.

Depending on the product and the Identified Use, one or more of the following may apply:

The Identified Use may be safe without specific Risk Management Measures (note: a good basic standard of industrial hygiene is of course always required.)
The Identified Use may be safe when specific Risk Management Measures (RMMs) are taken. These can involve a Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV), or the use of respiratory protection: a half mask respirator or a full face respirator. These RMMs must have (at least) the (standard) effectiveness also presented in the Annex to the eSDS.
The Identified Use may be safe applying a combination of an RMM and a time limitation for the activity (in this case, no other activity yielding exposure may be performed during the same working day).

For details, see the Annex to the eSDS.

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