The list of chemical and product regulations affecting the electronics industry continues to grow in 2010. It’s not just growing, but broadening as countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas all look to strengthen and solidify their own regulatory regimes.

The IPC It’s Not Easy Being Green: Understanding Proliferating Chemical and Product Regulations Symposium will provide you with the most up-to-date information on environmental regulations and other trends affecting the electronics industry.

Chemical and Product Regulations

Electronics manufacturers continue to be affected by the shifting paradigm of environmental regulations. While regulations used to focus on manufacturing wastes, such as air and wastewater emissions, there is a growing lexicon of regulations focused on the chemicals in the products you sell. New regulations and new interpretations of existing regulations require you to understand regulations that used to apply only to chemical manufacturers. These new regulations demand you to know the chemicals that are used in making your product.

The 2010 It’s Not Easy Being Green Symposium will cover a variety of topics to help you understand new laws and regulations as well as regulatory trends. If you are going to successfully comply with environmental legislation and avoid business disruption, you have to have a clear understanding of the rules. Attend the Symposium and gain knowledge on new laws, regulations and requirements, such as:

• Updated information on the European Union’s RoHS revisions, including changes in scope, recommendations for the inclusion of medical and monitoring equipment, and the addition of new substance restrictions
• Latest revisions to the ever-changing EU REACH Regulation, including changes to the Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC) list and requirements for product manufacturers
• Overview of developing REACH-like chemicals regulatory regimes in Asia
• Update on critical substances under consideration for ban under Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan
• Implementation of the U.N. Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals in the United States
• How EPA’s interpretation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) requires reporting of recycled electronics manufacturing byproducts and waste products as new chemicals

• Information on California’s developing Green Chemistry regulations and the National Standards Foundation (NSF) Sustainability Standard and how they will affect your product
• Highlights of the newly revised IPC-1752A Materials Declaration Standard and overview of tools available for materials declaration
• Arguments in a lively debate for and against full disclosure of materials in electronic products
• Summary of the U.S. EPA report, “Design for the Environment: Partnership to Evaluate Flame Retardants in Printed Circuit Boards,” including end of life combustion studies
• Overview of flame retardant regulations and voluntary
  halogen-free standards
• An OEM’s perspective on the EPA’s Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) and other voluntary standards

Nancy Bolinger leads a discussion of halogen-free issues at Its Not Easy Being Green.

Workshop: Understanding the Fundamentals of the REACH Regulation
Monday, July 19, 1:30 pm–4:30 pm
Michael Kirschner, Design Chain Associates LLC
Join us before the conference begins for an in-depth workshop on the European Union’s Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical Substances (REACH) Regulation. During this workshop, you will learn everything you wanted to know about REACH, but haven’t known who to ask. This workshop is designed to provide those with little or no knowledge of REACH a “soup to nuts” background primer on REACH.

Workshop: Understanding and Implementing IPC-1752A on Materials Declaration
Wednesday, July 21, 1:30 pm–4:30 pm
Eric Simmon, NIST
IPC-1752A, Materials Declaration Management, is rapidly becoming the industry standard for exchanging materials content data. A member of the 175x family of standards, this XML-based standard defines data fields and structure for the exchange of RoHS, REACH and other substance compliance data. Join us after the conference for this workshop where you will gain a detailed understanding of the new revisions to the IPC-1752A materials declaration standard and learn how to implement this standard in your company. The instructor, Eric Simmon, is co-chair of the IPC committee that developed the standard.