The European Commission has published in its Official Journal a new regulation on the classification, labelling and packaging (CLP) of substances and mixtures, including nicotine.
The reclassification will come into force in December 2018. It introduces some changes in the classification of nicotine, regarding the acute toxicity of mixtures, as well as packaging.
It follows a proposal by Dutch authorities on 17th April 2015 to reclassify nicotine. The European Union Committee for Risk Assessment (RAC) decided to assess whether the current classification was  still adequate, and subsequently recommended revision.
As a recent ECigIntelligence report on CLP regulation explains, the proposal was accepted by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), which submitted a proposed amendment of the CLP regulation’s annexes containing the classification of nicotine; this was in turn accepted by the European Commission.
In the case of e-cigarette liquids, nicotine is the ingredient generally most affected by CLP regulation. ECigIntelligence recently published a comprehensive guide on the notification of companies under Regulation (EC) 1272/2008.
Some have argued that nicotine has been wrongly categorised as extremely toxic and should be dropped dramatically in terms of its risk classification – but this has not happened.
Image: HypnoArt