Cleaning up the data: Concawe’s first environmental update to the REACH dossiers since 2010

Concawe Review 33.2 Special REACH Edition - Article 1

In January 2025, Concawe distributed the Other Gas Oil (OGO) REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) registration dossier with the first major update of the environmental data since 2010. In the European Union, the REACH regulation requires companies to provide chemical safety data in their dossiers. This article provides a brief overview of the environmental data required for chemical registration under REACH, the content generated by Concawe, and the changes that have been made in the recent OGO dossier. The OGOs, like other petroleum substances, are very complex substances with hundreds to thousands of hydrocarbon constituents that can be poorly water-soluble or volatile, making it difficult to apply standard test methods. To meet regulatory requirements, Concawe used two key strategies: ‘read-across’ (applying data from similar substances) and predictive models like PetroTox, which estimates toxicity from chemical structure. The updates to the OGO dossier included testing proposals for chronic aquatic and terrestrial toxicity, revising biodegradability assessments, and submitting new test data and supporting documents. With an ECHA-mandated 2030 deadline approaching to update all the Concawe REACH dossiers, the OGO dossier update acts as a template for the dossiers of the remaining petroleum categories. This work ensures compliance with evolving EU regulations and strengthens the scientific foundation for Concawe-supported chemical safety assessments.