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German FEA - Substances Hazardous to Waters

Administrative Regulation on the Classification of Substances hazardous to waters into Water Hazard Classes (Verwaltungsvorschrift wassergefahrdende Stoffe - VwVwS)

To protect water, Germany requires that installations for handling substances constituting a hazard...

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To protect water, Germany requires that installations for handling substances constituting a hazard to water must be built and operated in such a manner that no contamination of waters, or any other detrimental change in their properties is to be feared. To ensure this, substances used in such installations must be tested and classified for their water-hazardous properties. Classification is carried out on the basis of the Text of Administrative Regulation on the Classification of Substances Hazardous to Waters into Water Hazard Classes (Verwaltungsvorschrift wassergefährdende Stoffe; VwVwS) of 17 May 1999 including annexes 3 and 4. The amendment to the VwVwS of 27 July 2005 entered into force on 1 August 2005.

This is not strictly speaking however a list of aquatic toxicants, but rather of chemicals that fit a variety of chemical hazard profiles that should not enter the waters, whether due to aquatic toxicity or toxicity to humans who will use the waters.

More useful links:

 

Requirements for assigning the four water hazard classes (WGK 0-3) to a chemical are detailed in section 3 of the "Guidelines for self classification" document linked above. An overview:

VwVwS provides that a WGK should be assigned to a substance on the basis of at least four hazard characteristics (the so-called "basic data set"):

  • Acute oral or dermal toxicity to mammals (e.g. LD50 in rats).
  • One piece of data on aquatic toxicity - fishes (acute), daphnia (acute) or algae).
  • Biodegradability.
  • Potential for bioaccumulation.

Additional data are required before a substance may be classified as "non-hazardous to waters" (cf. Section 3.7). There are two fundamental ways to establish the data of the basic data set:

a) the substance has been classified into a corresponding R-phrase in Annex 1 of Directive 67/548/EEC ("legal classification" according to the Law on Hazardous Substances)

b) corresponding studies have been conducted and are known to the classifier. Possibility a) only provides evidence that a substance has certain hazardous characteristics (e.g. toxicity to mammals). Because the EU does not publish whether a substance has been evaluated and determined to be non-toxic, possibility b) applies in such cases. The classifier must therefore procure the corresponding report. This obviously results in a duplication of effort, but it remains unavoidable as long as the EU does not publish "negative classifications". Table 1 shows the R-phrases available for establishing the various components of the basic data set according to possibility a)

 

Hazards for Hazard List
Endpoint Hazard Rating and Description GREENSCREEN® HPD C2C
Human and/or Aquatic toxicity and/or Persistence and/or Bioaccumulation
Human and/or Aquatic toxicity and/or Persistence and/or Bioaccumulation: Unspecified hazard Low confidence
Class 1 - Low Hazard to Waters Multiple Endpoints (Red)
Human and/or Aquatic toxicity and/or Persistence and/or Bioaccumulation
Human and/or Aquatic toxicity and/or Persistence and/or Bioaccumulation: Unspecified hazard Low confidence
Class 2 - Hazard to Waters Priority List Multiple Endpoints (Red)
Human and/or Aquatic toxicity and/or Persistence and/or Bioaccumulation
Human and/or Aquatic toxicity and/or Persistence and/or Bioaccumulation: Unspecified hazard Low confidence
Class 3 - Severe Hazard to Waters Priority List Multiple Endpoints (Red)
Positive List
Positive List: Very low hazard
Non-Hazardous to Water (Water Hazard Class 0 NWG) Acute Aquatic Toxicity (Fish, Invertibrates, and/or Algae)

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