Current Activities of the Biocidal Products Committee (BPC) and Updated BPR Vademecum

Current Activities of the Biocidal Products Committee (BPC) and Updated BPR Vademecum

The Biocidal Products Committee (BPC) is responsible for preparing the opinions of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) on several issues, including the approval of active substances and Union Authorisations of biocidal products. At Kerona Scientific’s virtual Biocides Symposium, held in February this year, BPC chair Erik van de Plassche spoke about the past, present and future of the committee.

Mr. van de Plassche noted that the committee has been dealing with more and more processes over time, mainly active substance approval and Union Authorisations but also Article 38 decisions (where there is disagreement between Member States over mutual recognition), and Article 75 requests from the Commission or Member States relating to technical guidance or risks to health or the environment.

The main achievement by the BPC in 2021 was active substances approvals. A number of opinions were published, with most resulting in the approval of the active substance. There has been a drop in the number of opinions on active substance approvals since the BPC began its work in 2014, predominately due to the amount of time now being spent by Member States in assessing endocrine disruption properties. There is also a backlog of Union authorisations from Member States. The BPC had predicted an increase in dossier submissions in 2021 but this didn’t come to fruition.

Looking to the future, the key topics for the BPC identified by Mr. van de Plassche for active substances included performing risk assessment for substances identified as endocrine disruptors, the need to assess all the exclusion criteria for substances at renewal, and the analysis of alternatives to substances that meet the exclusion criteria. For Union Authorisation, important areas include the improvement of the quality of the Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC), risk mitigation measures for treated articles not included in the approval decision, the need for reduced complexity of Biocidal Product Families (BPF), and upcoming discussions on disinfection by-products and chlorate in biocidal products containing active chorine as an active substance.

Information on the current status of all the active substances in the Review Programme is included in Kerona Scientific’s BPR Vademecum, the handy guide to all aspects of the BPR. The newly updated 2022 edition is now available in print and digital formats from our website https://kerona.es/product/bpr-vademecum/

If you need assistance with any aspects of your biocidal product authorisation, please get in touch with Kerona’s expert team at info@kerona.ie.

If you would like a copy of the presentations, you can purchase the slides from Dublin Biocides Symposium here.