RoHS schemes provide proof of due diligence

Two new services help organisations seeking to demonstrate due diligence in compliance with the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive.

UL International (UK) has set up two new services designed for organisations seeking to demonstrate due diligence in compliance with the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive.

Both the UL Restricted Substance Product Certification and the UL Restricted Substance Management Systems Registration are designed to help organisations self-declare compliance with RoHS.

"UL created these services in response to the need in the industry for additional confidence when self declaring their products are in compliance with the requirements of the RoHS Directive", said David Haataja, Vice President and General Manager of UL's Restricted Substances Compliance Solutions.

"UL's RoHS Product Certification and System Registration services serve as important methods to help the customer have confidence in its due diligence when declaring its products compliance with the RoHS Directive".

Under the RoHS Product Certification programme, UL tests representative samples of a product at the homogeneous level for the six substances restricted by RoHS and that the levels for those substances are in compliance with the limits set by the RoHS Directive.

Substances covered under RoHS include lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), hexavalent chromium (Cr+6 ), polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE).

If the product meets the RoHS Directive limits, UL authorises the organisation to apply the UL RoHS mark to the manufactured product.

Products that qualify for the UL RoHS Product Mark also must meet UL's RoHS Product Certification requirements, including on-site surveillance visits twice per year from a UL representative.

UL's Restricted Substances Management System Registration assesses an organisations compliance with the standards established by the International Electrotechnical Commission Quality Assessment System for Electronic Components (IECQ QC080000 HSPM).

These standards require that organisations have implemented processes to identify and control the hazardous substance content in their products.

Processes covered include, but are not limited to, management responsibility, product design, purchasing, production, and analysis of data.

The QC080000 contains additional requirements to the ISO9001 standard.

Therefore, organisations that have quality management systems that conform to ISO9001 will realise comparability when they implement conformance to the QC080000 Standard for HSPM.

Additionally, organisations with management systems that conform to other standards such as ISO14001 for environmental management systems will also realise benefit as they implement conformance to QC080000.

UL is a Supervising Inspectorate under the IECQ System.

Dr Terenzio Facchinetti, UL European Restricted Substances Compliance Solutions (RSCS) Business Manager said: "These new compliance marks are part of UL's ever increasing portfolio of RoHS services marketed under the RSCS Toolkit brand".

"The marks have been created in response to the manufacturers' requests for support in achieving due diligence and claim compliance to the RoHS Directive".

"Also, the provision of two separate conformity marks will better match the full spectrum of needs expected within a contractor-supplier relationship".

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