Poison Centres

Changes in product categorisation for notifying poison centres

Helsinki, 20 July 2020 - The European product categorisation system (EuPCS) has been updated with changes for e-liquids, medical devices, alloys, and pyrotechnic products. The EuPCS is now also available in 23 EU languages together with updated support material.

The changes include:

• Splitting the category ‘e-liquids and mixtures for electronic cigarettes (PC-ELQ)’ into ‘e-liquids for electronic cigarettes PC-ELQ-1’ and ‘Mixtures for e-liquids PC-ELQ-2’
• New categories for ‘Medical devices for cleaning and disinfection (PC-MED-1)’, ‘Other medical devices (PC-MED-OTH)’ and ‘Alloys PC-TEC-25’
• Merging pyrotechnic categories ‘PC-PYR-1’ to ‘PC-PYR-4’, and ‘PC-PYR-OTH’ into one category: ‘Pyrotechnic products (PC-PYR)’

The EuPCS will be included in the poison centre notification format and made available in the dossier preparation tools in October together with the next IUCLID release.

An updated EuPCS practical guide is also available to support with the categorisation of mixtures according to their intended use.

Background

According to Article 45 of the CLP Regulation, companies must provide information about certain hazardous mixtures they are placing on the market to relevant national bodies. The national bodies make this information available for poison centres to give advice to the public or medical personnel in the event of an emergency. Annex VIII to the CLP Regulation defines the harmonised requirements for poison centre notifications applicable as of 1 January 2021.

The European product categorisation system is used to facilitate the transmission of information on the intended use of a mixture for which a submission must be made according to Article 45 and Annex VIII of the CLP Regulation and to support the statistical analysis of poisoning cases.