Environmental Product Declarations (EPD)

EFCA has published a further EPD's. The series now covers Plasticising and Superplasticising admixtures, Accelerators, Retarders, Air Entrainers and Waterproofers. EPD's are increasingly being requested from producers of construction materials to enable 'Life Cycle Analysis and Assessment' to be carried out on new structures.
The admixture EPD's are available for free download on the publications page of this EFCA web site.

Conducting a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of concrete shows that admixture use will usually reduce the environmental impact and improve the properties of the concrete in the structure, making it more sustainable as a construction material.

REACH

Most admixtures will be classified as preparations under REACH and admixture producers will be downstream users.
Admixture manufacturers are working with their chemical suppliers on the new legislation and there is no current reason to believe that any admixtures would need to be withdrawn as a result of REACH. The main change for users will be an enhanced Safety Data Sheet.
A small number of admixtures may need to be registered but it is very unlikely that they will require authorisation as they are not hazardous.
EFCA is coordinating its response to REACH with the rest of the concrete industry through the European Concrete Platform.

CPDW (Construction Products in contact with Drinking Water)

Working under European Commission (EC) Mandate 136, EFCA has been involved with this work for several years with a seat at the old regulators group and now as an expert on the cementitous subgroup. EFCA is also on the CEPMC committee for this work. Working with the rest of the concrete industry through TC 104 /WG 14 an approved constituents list (ACL) had been developed but not yet accepted by the water regulators.

EFCA had provided much supporting information to the EC expert group and has a strong position paper to support its case that admixtures present no risk when used in concrete for drinking water use.

However, the proposed system in Mandate 136, working within the Construction Products Directive (CPD) has now been found to be unworkable. Progress is currently on hold until a new way forward is proposed by the EC.

RDS (Regulated Dangerous Substances)

This legislation is under European Commission (EC) Mandate 366 and most of the work is in sub committees of CEN TC 351.

The release of RDS would, for admixtures, only apply to release from hardened concrete in the form of a monolith. EFCA is therefore working with the concrete industry on this legislation through TC 104/WG 14.

WG 14 believes that Concrete poses no risk with respect to release of RDS (note that concrete is frequently used to contain and neutralise RDS). This group is therefore most active on the Without Testing (WT) sub group of TC 351 and is fully involved in drafting the report. EFCA members are also involved in TC 351 through CEPMC and also their national mirror groups.

The EFCA EQ Seal

Seven EFCA National Associations continue to work within this scheme to show that the products of their members pose no environmental risk and meet all current safety legislation.
Further details of the scheme can be found in a document EFCA EQ Seal, Scheme outline on the ‘PUBLICATIONS ‘page.
 
GHS

Global Harmonised System for product classification, packaging and labelling.
The European Union are proceeding with the introduction of the GHS and new pictogram labelling of admixture will start to appear over the next few years.
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European Concrete Platform

The European Concrete Platform has released new documents on sustainability of concrete dealing with ‘Fire protection and safety with concrete’ and ‘Concrete for energy efficient buildings’. Copies of the publications are available for download from the EFCA ‘PUBLICATIONS’ page

Further documents from the ECP are due out over the next months covering further information on fire and also on design to EC 2.

A new project on Fire Engineering will be initiated soon.

The ECP web site should go on line by mid 2007.