Test Requirements? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ RoHS Test Requirements!

Demonstrating EU RoHS Compliance May Get Much More Expensive and Much Less Meaningful

On November 22, the European Commission posted a “possible future standardisation request” to EU standards body CENELEC regarding updating EN IEC 63000:2018. The proposal complains that the harmonized standard does not “carry out the internal production control procedure in line with module A, point 2 of Annex II to Decision No 768/2008/EC.” At issue are test reports.

Back in 2011, after Directive 2011/65/EU became law, CENELEC was authorized by the Commission to develop an industry standard that would allow manufacturers to continue using the “best practices” that had been developed to comply with the first RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive, 2002/95/EC while meeting the intent of Module A of Decision 768/2008/EC. And thus, European Standard EN 50581:2012 came to be.

With the spread of RoHS-like regulations around the world, IEC Technical Committee 111 transformed the European Standard into an International Standard that could be referenced by other markets to define how compliance could be achieved. IEC 63000:2016 was adopted by regulators around the world and even replaced EN 50581:2012 (now EN IEC 63000:2018).

The industry felt justified in the development of this harmonized standard because the “test report” requirement of Module A is effectively impossible to meet. Decision 768/2008/EC pre-dates Directive 2011/65/EU and was defined without consideration of RoHS-like requirements. Since RoHS defines restrictions at the homogeneous material level, testing every homogeneous material, or even those suspected or potentially capable of including one of the six (at the time) restricted substances, would be:

• Cost-Prohibitive. A component may contain numerous homogeneous materials. A single EEE may have hundreds or thousands of unique components. Testing each homogeneous material correctly, or even limiting it to those that could potentially include a RoHS restricted substance, would be impractical and add extraordinary costs to product development.
• Insufficient to demonstrate control over series production. Article 7(e) of the RoHS Directive requires that “procedures are in place for series production to remain in conformity.” This means controlling the parts and materials used to manufacture products over time. In large part, this is accomplished by specifying parts and materials and their manufacturers in a controlled environment, like a document control system subject to written control procedures (e.g. ECOs). It also means ensuring the parts and materials remain compliant. Parts and materials remain compliant based on several factors that can be assessed by a coherent quality system. These include:
  • Assessing supplier knowledge and understanding of RoHS requirements
  • Obtaining documentation showing that they understand what their product is comprised of (e.g., full material disclosure)
  • Obtaining a signed, properly written certificate of compliance declaring that the product is compliant

What it does not include is a one-time test report. Test reports provide information, which – if the test is done correctly – can prove quite useful, but they are only meaningful for the production lot the test subjects come from. Components or materials from a different production lot – say for your production next week, next month or next year – that test report becomes nearly irrelevant. Unless you know that your supplier’s production is under control and they have not sent you a change notice that composition of the part they’re selling you has changed, it has no value. But if you have that assurance and trust it, what value is there in a test report? And if you don’t trust your supplier, why are they your supplier?

So why does the Commission want to ignore the lessons of the past 14 years of RoHS? Taking a pedantic approach to Module A will be loved by test houses and despised by manufacturers, but it will provide no additional assurance of compliance. Send your comments to ENV-RoHS@ec.europa.eu by December 20, 2024.

China RoHS Update

On November 19, the People’s Republic of China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) published a set of eight disparate draft mandatory standards and opened a public comment period that ends on January 18. Buried in the .rar file is a draft mandatory (GB) standard that will replace two existing China RoHS-related standards:

• GB/T 26572-2011: Requirements of concentration limits for certain restricted substances in electrical and electronic products
• SJ/T 11364-2014: Marking for the restricted use of hazardous substances in electronic and electrical products.

Note that it also includes the first “catalog” (i.e., those products subject to actual restriction of the substances) in Appendix B of the standard. The purpose of this appears to be to list the “high-risk components” that are required to be tested, rather than to be the formal list of products subject to substance restriction.

Included as well is a document entitled “preparation instructions,” which serves as a history of and interesting rationale for the development of this draft, GB xxxx-xxxx, “requirements for restricted use of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic products,” will, as pointed out by the “preparation instructions:”

• Add the four phthalates already restricted by EU RoHS (DBP, DIBP, BBP and DEHP).
• Reference GB/T 39560, which is China’s implementation of the IEC 62321 series of standard test methods that includes test methods for RoHS substances.
• Add QR codes, screen displays and other digital indicators to labeling information methods and requirements.
• Require test reports for “high-risk components” for products listed in the “catalog.” See the discussion above regarding testing for why this is an incredibly misguided requirement.
• Add inspection rules to ensure RoHS compliance.

The requirement for testing implies that every homogeneous material in every “high-risk component” must be tested. This requirement, as noted above, will significantly increase product development costs, delay production and provide no additional assurance of compliance.

Section 6.4, Labeling Requirements, includes alternatives for labeling, which are welcome – particularly the explicit inclusion of “company website” as an allowable location for the table, as shown in Table 1. While it was allowed to be placed on the company website for B2B products only under China RoHS 1, no explicit allowance was made under any circumstance under China RoHS 2.

You have until January 18, 2025 to fill out the “Feedback Form for Mandatory National Standards" (see Appendix 3) during the public announcement period and send it via email to KJBZ@miit.gov.cn (please indicate in the subject of the email: Feedback on the public announcement of the draft of eight mandatory national standards including "Safety Technical Requirements for Architectural Decorative Stone.” I strongly recommend providing feedback that the test requirement should be stricken (for the reasons listed above) and compliance with China Standard GB/T 36560-2018, which is the Chinese implementation of IEC 63000:2016, continue to be the requirement for technical documentation of compliance.

What’s the PFAS Situation?

With several per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) regulations in place, I’ll take this opportunity to update the various statuses of some that include electronics in their scope:

• U.S. EPA: TSCA Section 8(a)(7) requires reporting on PFAS contained in articles imported into the U.S. between 2011 and 2022. Due to “budgetary constraints” and “competing priorities,” the reporting period has been pushed out to July 11, 2025 - January 11, 2026 (small manufacturers only reporting as PFAS article importers have until July 11, 2026).

Given the change in administration, this could be delayed further. However, as the rule requiring this was included in the Defense Authorization Act of 2020 that was passed under the previous Trump Administration, the likelihood of it being withdrawn entirely is low.

• Maine: I addressed Maine in my June column this year. Nothing has changed.
• Minnesota: I speculated in the June column that Minnesota, which had almost directly copied the original Maine regulation, would change their law to match Maine’s. At this time, they have no intentions of following Maine. In fact, they recently opened a stakeholder comment period regarding a proposed rule to combine the PFAS in products reporting and fee rules. Minnesota’s rule requires reporting extensive information by manufacturers about PFAS in products they sell in the state by January 1, 2026. They continue to work on the criteria to be used to determine “Currently Unavoidable Use.”
• Other U.S. States with bill that could affect the electronics industry:
  • Illinois – SB2705: “Referred to Assignments”
  • Michigan – HB 5657: “Referred to Committee on Natural Resources, Environment, Tourism and Outdoor Recreation”
• EU: ECHA and five European countries issue progress update on PFAS restriction. ECHA issued a three-page update on their status on November 20, 2024. They continue to review the 5600 comments received during last year’s consultation. The consultation identified additional uses of PFAS they were not aware of. A lesson of this is to always consider participating in government stakeholder consultations. In addition, they state that they are considering alternative restriction options “besides a full ban or a ban with time-limited derogations” for batteries and similar devices but could also be applied to semiconductors or fluoropolymers. No timeline was provided, but my guess is that we are probably a year or two away from a proposal to amend REACH Annex XVII.
• Canada: On July 27, 2024, the Canada Department of the Environment issued a “notice with respect to certain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).” This notice requires anyone who sold virtually any product in Canada in 2023 that contained a PFAS included on a relatively short list of 312 substances (including PTFE/Teflon®), but above certain de minimis levels, to provide details to the government by January 29, 2025. They finally provided a guidance manual to assist manufacturers and importers in responding to this information demand. I’m surprised that they have not yet pushed out the timeline. Six months is an incredibly short period of time for many manufacturers to be able to produce information on substances that are not reportable or restricted in any jurisdiction or that require disclosure anywhere else.

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