The German Water Hazard Regulations

Full translated name is “Regulation on the Classification of Substances hazardous to waters into Water Hazard Classes” (Verwaltungsvorschrift wassergefährdende Stoffe – VwVwS) or abbreviated to either WGK (Wassergefährdungsklassen) or VwVwS.

This regulation came into force originally in November 1996 and has been modified several times since. The regulation sets out that all substances are either non-hazardous to water (ngw, nicht wassergefährdende) or assigned to one of three classes:

                WGK 1: Low hazard to waters

                WGK 2: Hazard to waters

                WGK 3: Severe hazard to waters

When a substance is not named in the regulations it is possible to use the R-phrase classifications for a substance to calculate the WGK classification, it must be kept mind that this always depends on the most sensitive data item.

What is LD50/LC50?

LD50 and LC50 are standard measures for expressing and comparing the toxicity of chemicals, LD50 is the abbreviation for lethal dose 50 and LC50 is the abbreviation for lethal concentration 50, usually in air or water. The value that is associated with either is the lowest amount of the chemical, given in one dose, which is required to kill 50% of the test subjects. Toxicologists can use many kinds of animals but testing is usually done with rats and mice.

What is GHS/CLP and who does it affect?

Put simply this regulation affects everyone who sells hazardous materials to other professional users and will replace the UK’s CHIP regulations. So why do we need to change? The idea of the GHS framework is to make it easier for companies to do business thoughout the world by everyone using the same classifications. If you look at the table for Acute Toxic (Oral) you can see how hard it is for companies, for each country that they want to trade in they have to create a different MSDS.

Some of the subjects to be covered

Over the next few weeks we plan on discussing these topics:

• What is GHS/CLP and who does it affect?
• What do LD50 and LC50 mean?
• The German Water regulations (WGK)
• What are the CLP Classifications, Acute Toxic, STOT RE…..?
• The Hazard and Prevention statements
• The percentage of formulation statements that might appear in section 3.3 of the CLP MSDS (“Contains x% of components with unknown hazards to the environment” and “x percent of the mixture consists of component(s) of unknown toxicity”)
• What are OEL/WEL limits
• Environmental controls
• UN Transport codes

If there is any topic to do with Material Safety Data Sheets that you would like discussed please contact me on billp@minerva-mix.com