Changes to the regulation of industrial chemicals
Changes have been made to the Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (POEO Act) to strengthen the regulation of industrial chemicals and align NSW with new national standards for industrial chemicals environmental risk management.
The changes have been made under the Environmental Legislation Amendment (Hazardous Chemicals) Act 2024 and commenced on 25 March 2024.
Key changes include:
- implementing new national standards for managing the environmental risks of industrial chemicals - the Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management Standard (IChEMS)
- introducing new scheduled activities for environmentally hazardous chemicals to require users of high-risk industrial chemicals to be licensed by the EPA
- enhancing regulatory oversight of emerging problem chemicals through chemical use notices, which require users of a specified chemical to provide information to the EPA about their use of the chemical
- streamlining the NSW regulatory framework for managing industrial chemicals by transferring key provisions of the Environmentally Hazardous Chemicals Act 1985 (EHC Act) to the POEO Act, and repealing the EHC Act
- converting EHC licences to environment protection licences.