Healthy,
safe and
productive lives
and enterprises

Transposition of Chemical Handling Directive Completed

The Chemical Handling Directive 2014/27/EU published in February 2014 amends five existing Directives to align them with the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation (EU No. 1272/2008). Irish Statutory Instruments were recently updated to reflect these changes and are included in the following amending Regulations:

  • The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Carcinogens)(Amendment) Regulations - S.I No 622 of 2015,
  • The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (Chemical Agents)(Amendment) Regulations - S.I No 623 of 2015, and
  • The Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Applications) Regulations - S.I. No. 70 of 2016 - to align with the following Directives; Pregnancy and breastfeeding woman at work (92/85/EEC), Health and safety signs at work (92/58/EC) and Young people at work (94/33/EC).

The Chemical Handling Directive ensures the coherency of legislation and an appropriate level of health and safety protection when hazardous chemical substances and mixtures are present in the working environment. The main changes in these amendments involved replacing the word ‘dangerous’ with ‘hazardous’, 'preparation' with 'mixture' and replacing ‘risk phrases’ with ‘hazard statements’.

Back to Chemicals Homepage