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Executive Summary

This paper is the second of two volumes describing proposals to amend the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Act 1996 (HSNO).

The first volume presents proposals that came out of the development of the government's Hazardous Substances Strategy and will be of interest to a general audience. This second volume covers issues that will be of interest to more specialist, technical audiences. These issues have been identified as a result of our experience working with the hazardous substances part of the HSNO Act. Most of the issues were not included in the strategy because their potential impact was limited.

Specifically, volume two includes proposals to:

  • improve the workability of exposure limit controls for protecting people and the environment from the effects of toxic and ecotoxic substances
  • make it easier to move specialty substances between research institutions
  • allow substances imported to New Zealand solely for re-export to be covered by the existing containment approvals mechanism in the HSNO Act
  • improve compliance, monitoring and enforcement by:
    • requiring HSNO approval numbers on labels
    • providing for a register of test certificates
    • giving ERMA the power to revoke an approved handler test certificate
    • ensuring that if an unapproved substance is imported, it must be re-exported
    • providing for enforcement agencies, when doing HSNO work, to use powers of entry and inspection that they have under other legislation
    • taking a fresh look at HSNO systems to report hazardous substance-related injuries
  • review data protection provisions for agrichemicals
  • provide new pathways to:
    • enable rapid approval for substances needed in an environmental emergency
    • enable rapid reassessment to reassess a substance if the original approval was given via the non-publicly notified rapid assessment pathway.

We are now seeking community feedback. The submissions we receive will be considered when drawing up proposals to ministers for amending the HSNO Act. We would expect the resulting amendment bill to be introduced into Parliament before the end of 2004.

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