Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) refer to substances that persist in the environment. Organic chemicals with long half-lives that can accumulate through the food web and adversely affect human health and the environment.
In order to fulfill its commitments in the Convention, the European Union promulgated the POPs Control Regulation (EC) No 850/2004, and released a new version of the POPs Control Regulation (EU) 2019/1021 in 2019. This regulation controls a series of persistent organic pollutants. Among them, the substances controlled in Annex I are prohibited from being manufactured, put on the market and used, whether they exist alone, in the form of mixtures, or in articles, unless they comply with Immunity Clause. At present, there are 29 items in the list of banned substances in Annex I of the EU POPs regulations.
All products sold to the EU must be separated into homogeneous materials (including accessible and inaccessible materials) for testing. If the items are metal, ceramics, glass and other materials, no testing is required; if the items are plastic, rubber, sponge , textiles, coatings and other non-metals, it is recommended to detect substances in POPs after understanding the use of the materials.
1) For plastics and rubber: polybrominated diphenyl ethers, pentaphenyl ether, hexaphenyl ether, heptaphenyl ether, SCCP, HBCDD, PCB, PCN.
2) For electroplating solutions, electroplating labels, coatings, and printed textile materials: PFOS, PFOA, and PCP.
3) For varnish and glue products: PCB, PCN.
4)For electronic components and chip ICs: brominated diphenyl ether, pentaphenyl ether, hexaphenyl ether, heptaphenyl ether, SCCP, HBCDD, PCB, PCN.
SCCP: Limit requirements: substances or configurations < 10000 ppm, articles < 1500 ppm. Main applications: widely used in cables, and can also be used in water pipes, floors, films, artificial leather, plastic products and daily necessities, etc. Mainly used as flame retardant.
PFOS: Limit requirements: substances or configurations ≤ 10 ppm, articles, semi-finished products or components < 1000 ppm. For textile materials, the coating material content needs to be < 1ug/m2. Main applications: widely used in the production of textiles, leather products, furniture antifouling treatment agent for surfaces such as carpets and carpets.
HBCDD: Limit requirement: 100 ppm, main application: used for flame retardant of polypropylene plastics and fibers, polystyrene foam, and also used for polyester fabric resistance.
POPs tests all non-metallic materials inside and outside the product. Metal materials do not need to be tested, and materials with different colors need to be tested. Generally speaking, a mixed testing method is adopted. A more precise sampling is to divide every 20 points into a group for testing. If you only test the SCCP in the POP, a single-point test method is generally adopted.
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