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.

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