by Mr. Martin Murín

For the national assessment of persistent and environmentally hazardous chemicals different activities are running in the Slovak Republic.

These are between others:

• regular state monitoring
• chemicals inventories of production, import and use,
• site-specific surveys of polluted areas and
• selection of priority chemicals.

In this speech I would like to focuse on the programme of the priority setting of chemicals produced or imported into the Slovak Republic in high volumes (SHVC).

The goal of the first inicial priority setting of industrial chemicals was identification of chemicals with high exposure potential and hazard potencial for human health and the environment.

Selection criteria are potential of persistency in the environmental compartments, potencial for accumulation in the living organisms with perspective of high toxicity.

List of SHVC (result of inventory done in years 1992/93) was published as amendment to Journal of the Slovak Ministry of Environmant (1995). It contains list of 174 chemical substances produced or used in the Slovak Republic in volumes higher then 1000 tons a year.

The list of SHVC was compared with list of HPVC OECD (EXICHEM database).

Following step was identification of classification of chemicals based on EU classification criteria. If identified hazard symbols are listed in the tables.

Following lists were used for comparison with Slovak HVC:

• EU priority chemicals in context of Council Resolution 793/93 (EEC);
• EU list of hazard chemicals for water environment (Directive 76/464 (EC));
• 100 priority chemicals - Swedish SunSet project
• EU priority chemicals based on IPS.

In addition, presence of chemicals in list of poisons used in SR is marked.

In the following step screening searching for relevant data on biodegradability and bioaccumulation potential was done. When data missing we used models to predict possible environmental fate of chemicals.

Using prescribed steps before we recommend to prioritized chemicals based on following criteria:

- Not ready biodegradable or DT50 longer then 15 days

- High potential for bioaccumulation (logPow > 3, or BCF > 1000)

- Kd for inorganics

- Chemical is prioritized by EU (hazard classification or hazardous for the water environment) or identified in SunSet project as priority chemical.

In the following table comparison with different priority lists is presented:

Tab. No. 1 Comparison of the Slovak HPVC list with presence in different priority setting list

CAS = Chemicals Abstracts Service No.

OECD = list of HPVC OECD EXICHEM database (marked are chemicals not present in the EXICHEM database)

EU Classification = hazard classification - EU Dir. 67/548

EU PL = priority chemicals EU (Resolution 1179/94 and 2268/95)

EU water = chemicals hazardous for the water environment Dir. 76/464

SSP 100 = list of 100 priority chemicals - Swedish SunSet project

IPS = EU priority chemicals using IPS

SK pois = list of poisons in the Slovak Republic

We used following scheme:

Selection based on hazardous No present in EXICHEM 40

properties

Substances classified as hazardous
in EU 77

Biodegradability + List of EU priority chemicals 18

Bioaccumulation

EU chemicals hazard. For water env. 12

SSP 100 20

EÚ - IPS 19

Slovak poisons 14

Selection of 19 chemicals

based on hazardous properties

+ chemicals Prioritized in EU 11

- Hazardous for water environment EÚ 6

- Classified in EÚ

- hazardous for the environment - N 3

- carcinogenic - Carc1 a Carc2 7

40 chemicals (mostly pesticides) were not found in the OECD list of HPVC. (The 1995 OECD List of High Production Volume Chemicals).

47 % substances (77) are classified in EU based on inherent properties. 4 of them are classified as hazardous for the environment.

12 of chemicals were listed in EU list of chemicals hazardous for the water environment. (Dir. 76/464).

20 of chemicals were listed in SunSet priority list of 100 priority chemicals.

19 of chemicals are listed as priority chemicals using EÚ - IPS.

14 of chemicals are identified as poisons or extremely poisons in the Slovak list of poisons.