UK agency helps with RoHS compliance

According to a recent article in Newsfood.com, the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed reference materials to help countries and manufacturers comply with RoHS. In order to assure compliance with RoHS, companies may have to test products to ascertain levels of banned substances. Likewise, European Union governments that monitor products sold in Europe need testing standards to determine whether products are in compliance.

To help with testing, the Reference Materials Unit of JRC’s Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements has produced two certified sets of reference materials consisting of plastic granules containing known amounts of a range of elements, including lead, mercury and cadmium, substances banned by RoHS. Laboratories can purchase these materials and run their own tests on them to see if they are able to detect the correct amounts of the elements involved.

Other elements contained in the reference materials include arsenic, bromine, chlorine and sulfur, so labs can use the same reference materials to run tests relating to other European legislation including the Packing Directive and the End of Life Vehicles Directive.