The Government set out its detailed thoughts on the European Commission's proposed REACH regime for chemicals for the first time in a consultation paper issued on 30 March.1 An accompanying regulatory impact assessment contains two intriguing findings: that only a handful of cancer deaths would have to be averted to offset the regime's direct costs to industry; and that the Government's proposal for cost-saving mandatory consortia of chemical companies to prepare registration dossiers for each substance may not in fact save the industry much money.

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