Dear Friend,
Sorry to bother you twice in one day, but a couple of news items which can’t wait until next week.
ECHA chemicals search problems part 2
Earlier on today, I passed on a work-around on the ECHA chemical search issues, which is:
If you go into Google and type in the search term (chemical name, or CAS no. etc), then a space, then type in “site:https://echa.europa.eu/” (don’t put in the speech marks), this means Google only searches in the ECHA website itself.
It should bring up the Infocard link, any REACH dossier links etc.
However, we have now discovered that some people are getting an error message and still can’t access the information.
Alison has worked out what’s going on in some cases, but the bad news is that until ECHA fix the issue, some of us won’t have access to the chemical data we need.
- The problem appears to be with the disclaimer. In order to access the search results, you need to accept the disclaimer, which deposits a cookie in your browser.
- However, this cookie expires after a set number of days (we don’t know how many days), and normally you will need to accept the disclaimer again, to get a new cookie for a new set period.
- The search function, which is down, has also taken down the disclaimer cookie function.
- What this means is that if you haven’t got a valid disclaimer cookie, you’re blocked, even on the work-around search.
- If you do have a valid disclaimer cookie at the moment, it may run out and block access.
We are completely in ECHA’s hands on this situation, and I can only suggest that if you need access to ECHA’s information urgently, you check with your colleagues who may still be able to use Alison’s work-around.
Hope this helps to understand what’s going on, even if we can’t necessarily do anything about it. I appreciate how frustrating this is, as I’m being blocked on my laptop, while Alison has access, although we don’t know how long for.
I have communicated our findings on the disclaimer cookie to ECHA in case they weren’t already aware.
To cheer you up in the meantime, Alison has sent through this: Cookies!.pdf
DEFRA and the UK-REACH consultation, CBA support
Binny Todd of White Sea and Baltic writes:
Re UK-REACH submission deadlines, CBA ran a REACH clinic yesterday on this subject, not sure if you knew about it. In any case it was open to everyone, not just CBA members.
They will be running another one next week on Wednesday 10th August https://www.chemical.org.uk/training-and-workshops…
Upshot is there is a consultation process where industry is invited to “vote” for either option 1 or option 2. Option 1 is preferred by CBA/Industry, option 2 is preferred by HSE.
Here is the link to the survey: https://consult.defra.gov.uk/reach-policy/consultation-on-extending-the-uk-reach-submission/
We need as many people from the industry to complete this survey and “vote” for option 1 !!!
Many thanks to Binny for sending this through, and to Alison for working out what’s going on with the ECHA search. It seems that every time there’s a problem with their website, it comes in a slightly different flavour, as if they’re playing “whack-a-mole” with their glitches.
Have a great weekend,
Kind regards,
Janet
Janet Greenwood
TT Environmental Ltd