SVHC Candidate List: What It Is and Why Product Data Teams Track It

When a supplier declares a Substance of Very High Concern in a safety data sheet and that CAS number does not map reliably to every affected SKU in your catalog, your REACH compliance posture has a gap you cannot see. The SVHC Candidate List — the official ECHA roster of chemicals requiring EU disclosure — only protects your business when the compliance flag is attached to the right product record, deduplicated, enriched with provenance, and kept current as ECHA adds new entries. That structured enrichment-and-write-back problem is exactly what Claro solves.

Definition

The SVHC Candidate List names chemical substances that the European Chemicals Agency has identified as Substances of Very High Concern, typically because they are carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic to reproduction (CMR), persistent and bioaccumulative (PBT/vPvB), or otherwise of equivalent concern. Each entry references the substance by name and, where applicable, by its CAS and EC numbers. The list is updated by ECHA roughly twice a year and substances are only ever added — once a substance appears, it remains. As of mid-2026 it contains well over 240 entries.

Inclusion on the Candidate List is the first formal step under REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals). It does not ban a substance outright, but it creates immediate obligations for anyone placing articles on the EU market:

• If an article contains an SVHC above 0.1% weight by weight, suppliers must communicate safe-use information to recipients and respond to consumer requests within 45 days.
• Producers and importers also carry notification duties to ECHA and, since January 2021, to the SCIP database.

For product-data teams, the practical consequence is that a substance identity buried in a PDF safety data sheet becomes a structured attribute — with a CAS number, a list version, and a last-verified date — that must travel with every affected SKU through the PIM or ERP.

Why the SVHC Candidate List is a product-data problem

Compliance flags are only useful if they land on the right record, and that is a matching, deduplication, and enrichment problem before it is a regulatory one. A distributor sourcing the same industrial fastener from three vendors may receive SVHC declarations in three incompatible formats: a PDF safety data sheet keyed to one vendor part number, a spreadsheet column keyed to another, and a free-text note with no part number at all. Without identity resolution, the compliance attribute attaches to one variant and silently skips the others.

The cross-industry reach is broad. A CPG brand tracks SVHCs such as certain phthalates in packaging plastics and coatings; a furniture distributor monitors substances in foams, adhesives, and surface treatments; an industrial distributor manages them across seals, cables, and gaskets. In every case the workflow is the same: extract a CAS number from a declaration, normalize and validate it, check it against the current Candidate List, and write a structured, sourced flag back onto the canonical record in the PIM or ERP.

Claro handles this pipeline end-to-end: resolving supplier records to one identity, attaching compliance attributes with full provenance (source, date, list version), and refreshing them automatically when ECHA publishes a new Candidate List update. When the flag is provenance-tracked, a buyer — or an AI shopping assistant answering “is this REACH-compliant?” — can cite exactly where the determination came from and when it was last verified.

Before and after: SVHC tracking without and with clean product data

The four-step data pipeline

1. Extract

   Pull substance names and CAS numbers from safety data sheets, supplier declarations, and compliance certificates. Structured extraction is necessary because most declarations are unstructured PDFs.

2. Normalize and validate

   Validate each CAS number for structural correctness and resolve substance identity. A single substance can be referenced under multiple synonyms; normalization maps them all to one canonical identifier. See What Is a CAS Number? for the format rules.

3. Resolve to the canonical SKU

   Match the validated declaration to the canonical product record, not just to the vendor record it arrived with. This is the identity-resolution step that ensures the flag covers all equivalent SKUs, not just the one the supplier labeled.

4. Flag, date, and write back

   Attach the SVHC status as a structured attribute with source, ECHA list version, and verification date. Write the enriched record back into the PIM or ERP so downstream channels — e-commerce, EDI, GDSN, printed catalog — all draw from one trusted source. Data provenance ensures every flag is auditable.

SVHC versus related compliance frameworks

For a detailed side-by-side of how SVHC Candidate List duties differ from SCIP notifications and Annex XVII restrictions, see SVHC vs SCIP vs Annex XVII.

Related

FAQ

What does SVHC stand for? +

SVHC stands for Substance of Very High Concern. These are chemicals identified under the EU REACH regulation as posing serious risks to human health or the environment, such as carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxicants, and persistent bioaccumulative substances.

What is the 0.1% threshold for SVHCs? +

If an article contains a Candidate List substance above 0.1% by weight (weight by weight of the article), disclosure obligations apply. Suppliers must pass safe-use information down the supply chain and respond to consumer requests within 45 days. The threshold applies per article, which matters for assembled products.

How often is the SVHC Candidate List updated? +

ECHA typically updates the Candidate List twice a year, usually in January and June, though timing can vary. Substances are only ever added, never removed, so the list grows over time. This is why compliance flags need a last-verified date tied to a specific list version.

Is SVHC the same as RoHS or Prop 65? +

No. SVHC sits under EU REACH and covers a broad and growing set of substances in articles. RoHS restricts specific hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. California Prop 65 is a separate US disclosure regime. A single product can be in scope for all three, which is why teams maintain each as a distinct attribute on the canonical record.

How do I check a product against the SVHC Candidate List? +

Extract the substance and its CAS number from the safety data sheet or supplier declaration, validate the CAS, then match it against the current ECHA Candidate List. The SVHC Candidate List Checker automates the bulk lookup so you can flag affected SKUs across the catalog.

What is the SCIP database and how does it relate to the SVHC list? +

The SCIP database, maintained by ECHA, collects information on articles containing Candidate List SVHCs above 0.1% by weight. Since January 2021, producers and importers placing such articles on the EU market must submit notifications to SCIP. The SCIP obligation is triggered by the same 0.1% threshold as the supply-chain communication duty, but it is a separate reporting channel to a public database, not just a downstream disclosure.