Helping you comply with the complex notification process for poison centres

Poison centres play an important role in the safe use of chemicals as businesses are required to complete poison centre notifications providing information on hazardous mixtures classified for health or physical hazards. These are used by poison centres across Europe to provide medical advice to general consumers and/or physicians when poisoning incidents or exposures occur. Poison centres in the EU Member States answer over half a million calls for support per year.

However, with legislative requirements varying significantly across the EU, submitting data to poison centres is a complex process. NCEC’s poison centre notification service is driven by years of experience and provides tailored advice so that your portfolio is compliant across the EU, including with the additional mandatory national requirements set out by each Member State.

To harmonise information required in notifications across the EU, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) introduced Annex VIII of Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation. This sets out the deadlines by which notifications must be completed via the ECHA notification portal for all participating EU Member States. Most businesses within a supply chain are obligated to submit poison centre notifications. The deadlines for consumer and professional-use products have passed; the remaining deadlines are:

• 1 January 2024 – for industrial use products. 
• 1 January 2025 – for notifications which were completed via individual Member States and now need to be replaced by the harmonised portal notifications.

Unsure if your mixture falls under industrial-use? Watch this short video where we explain what is an industrial-use mixture, difference between full and limited submissions, and how you can become compliant.

EU Annex VIII to CLP Regulation also introduced Unique Formula Identifier’s (UFI’s) to help poison centres more easily identify a chemical mixture in an emergency.  

Our expert knowledge of these regulations can help you to maintain compliance, while retaining supply chain flexibility (i.e. you could still use multiple suppliers to provide an ingredient for a product). For example, we routinely manage perfume variations within product families and group submissions, which can potentially require interchangeable component groups (ICG’s). 

Our poison centre notification services 

Our poison centre notification package is driven by years of research of each Member State’s implementation of poison centre legislation, and our experience of shaping poison centre policy through our work with the European Commission. This has included thousands of hours of reviews, extensive discussions with each poison centre, and the compilation of comprehensive processes for notifications in each country.

We identify the specific data requirements for each Member State, tailored to your product range, and then liaise with the appropriate receiving  bodies to notify this information. You will then receive confirmation of notifications and the poison centre numbers can then be included on your safety data sheets (SDSs), where applicable.

Choosing NCEC to undertake a full outsourced or support service means that you benefit from our experience to reduce your notification process time and cost.

As well as full notification services, bringing together all the above elements NCEC also offers: 

• Company specific impact assessment, where our expert team assesses how your business can comply with the regulations and provides detail on the costs and activities of doing so. We assess any opportunities for reducing your compliance needs – this allows you to budget and resource appropriately in your business plan.
• A Poison Centre Compliance Report provides a comprehensive review of the diverse poison centre notification requirements in Europe.
• Our Horizon Scanning Service provides regulatory analysis and monitoring of your substance portfolio to identify whether your substances appear on any global regulatory lists. It helps to determine your obligations and what substances need alteration before further use, to allow you to make strategic decisions sooner. 

Key benefits of partnering with us for your poison centre product notifications include:

• Reduced time, expense and resource investment required to understand the complex notification requirements of poison centres in all EU Member States.
• Reduced registration costs as we can determine where group submissions can be made to reduce the number of notifications that must be completed and the appointed receiving bodies’ costs.
• Optimisation of your resources by determining what your actual obligations are and what products need to be registered.
• Notifications to some EU Member States require an additional security certificate at an added cost, which must be delivered in person, often in the country, and is sometimes the responsibility of a single person in the organisation. NCEC holds security certificates and can offer compliant certification, which can be used on your behalf to make the notifications at no additional cost.
• All communications with us can be conducted in English, whereas many receiving bodies insist on communication in the local language.
• We provide a bespoke service tailored to your specific needs. We help clients prioritise by volume of product and hazard to focus your available budget. We can also provide consultancy support to help you undertake your own registrations.
• We combine our horizon scanning, SDS authoring, and poison centre services to monitor all your substance portfolio changes and subsequent poison centre notifications and/or SDS updates, to allow you to maintain global compliance with confidence.

Contact us through the right-hand side form or a [email protected] to find out how we can streamline your notification process.