National Environmental Risk Management Framework for Chemicals

Australia's Government Environment Agencies through the National Environment Protection and Heritage Council (EPHC) are developing a National Environmental Risk Management Framework for Chemicals.

The need for a national framework was identified in an assessment of Australia's current approach to chemicals management, which concluded that while Australia had made significant progress towards best practice chemicals management, there was room for improvement.

The National Chemicals Taskforce presented the assessment to the EPHC in March 2003 in the document Towards Ecologically Sustainable Management of Chemicals in Australia.

The EPHC Chemicals Working Group was established and tasked with developing a nationally consistent and comprehensive environmental risk management framework for chemicals to support a national approach to ecologically sustainable chemical management.

More detail on these key areas and possible structures for the framework are provided in a progress report to stakeholders (April 2004).

The EPHC Chemicals Working Group has been working to develop three information exchange projects to support the Framework and chemical management in Australia:

National Chemicals Information Gateway - launched in April 2004 the gateway provides a simple and easy way to access information on chemicals in the environment already in the public domain.
National Chemicals Reference Guide - launched on 29 June 2005 the Guide brings together all environmental standards and guidelines for chemicals in a central searchable database containing over 600 chemicals.
Household Chemicals Education Program - commencing in 2005 the Program will provide education and information on household chemicals.