RoHS dedicated website launched
Design Chain Associates, LLC, announce the website dedicated to China’s new law entitled "Administration on the Control of Pollution Caused by Electronic Information Products", otherwise known as "China RoHS", is now live and active.
The site, is to become a destination for the electronics industry as it starts to grapple with the implications of this new law. Design Chain Associates, LLC, provides, understanding to the impact of the new, and ever growing, crop of environmental laws that impact the entire lifecycle of electronic products to this topic. DCA has already given the industry it's first publicly available translation of the law, it's first insights in to the key points and impacts of it, and updates based on direct contact with key officials in the China Ministry of Information Industry (MII), and is already the primary source of insight for the industry on the meaning and impact of this law.
The website has links to:
- The law itself on the MII website,
- An English translation of the law, and the clarification of its detailed and extensive scope,
- Links to commentary on the law and its precedents,
- The original submission from the Chinese government to the World Trade Organisation Technical Barriers to Trade Committee,
The law itself impacts the electronics industry in under a year, requiring electronics companies that sell products on the Chinese domestic market to understand the materials their products, and packaging, are made of in order to properly mark them by March 1, 2007. A draft of the marking standard exists, in Chinese only at this point. Many segments of the electronics industry that are outside the scope of the European Union's similar directive, "on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment" or "RoHS" (directive 2002/95/EC), such as medical devices and products, test equipment, radar systems, and large scale industrial tools such as semiconductor manufacturing equipment, have not even begun to understand these issues yet. If we as an industry have learned one thing from EU RoHS, it is that it is never too early to comply with laws that have the potential to shut your products out of a market.
