Federal Act
on Protection against Dangerous Substances and Preparations
(Chemicals Act, ChemA)

¹ In this Act:

a.

sub­stances means chem­ic­al ele­ments and their com­pounds in the nat­ur­al state or ob­tained by any pro­duc­tion pro­cess. A dis­tinc­tion is drawn between ex­ist­ing and new sub­stances:

1.

sub­stances shall be deemed to be ex­ist­ing sub­stances if they are des­ig­nated as such by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil,

2.

all oth­er sub­stances shall be deemed new;

b.

act­ive sub­stances means sub­stances and mi­croor­gan­isms in­clud­ing vir­uses which on ac­count of their ac­tion are de­signed to be used as biocid­al products or plant pro­tec­tion products;

c.

pre­par­a­tions means mix­tures or solu­tions com­posed of two or more sub­stances;

d.

biocid­al products means act­ive sub­stances and pre­par­a­tions that are not plant pro­tec­tion products and which are de­signed to:

1.

de­ter, render harm­less, des­troy or oth­er­wise con­trol harm­ful or­gan­isms, or

2.

pre­vent dam­age from be­ing caused by harm­ful or­gan­isms;

e.

plant pro­tec­tion products means act­ive sub­stances and pre­par­a­tions that are de­signed to:

1.

pro­tect plants and plant products against harm­ful or­gan­isms or pre­vent the ac­tion of such or­gan­isms,

2.

in­flu­ence the life pro­cesses of plants oth­er than as a nu­tri­ent,

3.

pre­serve plant products,

4.

des­troy un­wanted plants or parts of plants, or

5.

con­trol the un­desired growth of plants;

f.

man­u­fac­turer means any nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son who, by way of pro­fes­sion or trade, pro­duces or ex­tracts sub­stances or pre­par­a­tions, or im­ports them for pro­fes­sion­al or com­mer­cial pur­poses;

g.

no­ti­fi­er means any nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son who no­ti­fies new sub­stances to the no­ti­fic­a­tion au­thor­ity, sub­mits doc­u­ment­a­tion on ex­ist­ing sub­stances un­der re­view, or re­quests au­thor­isa­tion for act­ive sub­stances or pre­par­a­tions;

h.

no­ti­fic­a­tion au­thor­ity means the fed­er­al au­thor­ity that re­ceives in par­tic­u­lar no­ti­fic­a­tions of new sub­stances, doc­u­ment­a­tion on ex­ist­ing sub­stances un­der re­view, or re­quests for au­thor­isa­tion for act­ive sub­stances and pre­par­a­tions, as well as oth­er sub­mis­sions, co­ordin­ates the pro­ced­ures and is­sues the ne­ces­sary rul­ings;

i.

pla­cing on the mar­ket means provid­ing for or sup­ply­ing to third parties and im­port­ing for pro­fes­sion­al or com­mer­cial pur­poses;

j.

hand­ling means any activ­ity in con­nec­tion with sub­stances or pre­par­a­tions, in par­tic­u­lar, pro­duc­tion, im­port, ex­port, pla­cing on the mar­ket, stor­age, keep­ing, trans­port, use or dis­pos­al.

² The Fed­er­al Coun­cil may define more pre­cisely the terms spe­cified in para­graph 1, as well as oth­er terms used in this Act, draw fur­ther dis­tinc­tions, and, in the light of new sci­entif­ic and tech­no­lo­gic­al know­ledge and in line with in­ter­na­tion­al de­vel­op­ments, make ad­just­ments and grant ex­emp­tions.