All the industrial or agricultural or more generally human activities consume chemicals from natural or synthetic sources. Until 2007, each nation decreed its laws, regulations and standards concerning the use, risks and health hazards of some chemicals for some activities. Others escaped from any control, which created potential risks. For the regulated substances, concerned laws, regulations and standards were often different for each nation, which impeded international business. For example, there were 25 up to 40 different systems according to the estimations.
REACH is the European legislation replacing all these systems.
REACH is complex, evolutionary, brings out the shades of meaning between words and suffers numerous exceptions. No paper can treat in depth such a wide subject and to be ready in June 2008 a company must nominate and train a REACH expert on the staff or must subcontract to specialized consultants. Finally, only the interpretations of the Commission's proposals are legal, other documents are only for information purposes.