General principles used for compiling the SIN List

The SIN List focuses on substances that are regulated by REACH. This means that chemicals such as pesticides, intermediates and unintentionally produced substances are not within the scope of the SIN List.

All information used for selecting and assessing substances for the SIN List is publicly available. For CMRs the official CLP (Classification, Labelling and Packaging) classification has been used. These substances have been agreed on an EU-wide basis to have properties corresponding to the SVHC criteria.

In the first version of the SIN List, PBT and vPvB chemicals were added directly from the European PBT Working Group List, which was developed by the former European Chemicals Bureau (ECB), whose duties have since been taken over by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).

For later updates, PBTs/vPvBs as well as PMTs/vPvMs and equivalent level of concern substances (REACH article 57f), have been added to the SIN List after in-depth scientific evaluation and case-by-case assessment, based on publicly available peer-reviewed scientific studies.

It should be clearly stated that the absence of a substance from the SIN List does not indicate that it is a non-hazardous chemical.

There are several reasons why a substance may not have been added: it was never present in the “starting material” for an update (typically other priority lists, reports and review studies) or it was assessed but there was not enough available data at the time to include it on the SIN List. As science is constantly evolving, so will the view on what qualifies as an SVHC as well as which individual chemicals prove to have SVHC properties.