Norway has served notice that it intends to prohibit, with a few exemptions, 18 substances from consumer goods in Norway. Called the Prohibition on Certain Hazardous Substances in Consumer Products this could well be referred to as “PoHS” due to the passing resemblance to RoHS.
The legislation will only apply to Norway but already there appear to be limited choices for companies exporting to Europe. Either develop PoHS as a standard, as RoHS proved that manufacturers do not want to produce unnecessary variants of a product, or simply don’t ship to Norway.
The scope of PoHS is much wider than RoHS covering all consumer goods – with a few exceptions. The definition of “consumer” is any product that is intended for consumers or that can reasonably be expected to be used by consumers.
This includes such as clothing, bags, toys etc but does not apply to food products, food packaging, medical equipment, fertilisers, tobacco as well as means of transport and associated products such as tyres.
The Norwegian proposal is currently the subject of public consultation. However, it is scheduled to be adopted on December 15 2007 and come into force on January 1 2008.
It looks to restrict 18 substances with only lead and cadmium in common with generic EU RoHS.
Comparing the two, the scope of PoHS is wider and not just confined to Electrical and Electronic Equipment. Maximum concentration values are also more stringent, as low as 25ppm at, as in RoHS, homogeneous level.
The substances that are of relevance to the Electrical and Electronic industry include arsenic (Gallium Arsenide devices) various flame retardants, PVC plasticisers (added to a plastic material to soften it and improve flexibility), monomers used for polycarbonate, lead and cadmium (any consumer product not covered by RoHS excluding medical devices).
PoHS will be subservient to many existing regulations including EU RoHS and the Batteries and Accumulators Directive. This means that Electrical and Electronic products that fall within the scope of EU RoHS do not have to meet the more stringent PoHS requirements for lead and cadmium but do on the other 16, non-RoHS substances.
Companies selling into Norway may well have to re-source many, if not all certificates of compliance unless they adopted an IPC1752 compliant database in the first place and were able to source the data.
Guidance notes are available from RoHS-International at http://www.rohs-international.com
Directive Decoder
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