October 28th, 2008, European Chemicals Agency(ECHA) issued the first batch of the 15 Substances of Very High Concern(SVHC). Cobalt dichloride is No. 4 in the list of the 15 chemical substances.

REACH is the related standard for the registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemical substances for European Union which is issued in June 1st,2007.

The standard is not only applicable for the chemical substances that made in EU or imported from EU, the SCHC contained in the finished products are also supervised by it.

According to EU standard(98/98/EU) of Europe and the standard of 29th Commission Directive（2004/73/EC）, if the cobalt dichloride is more than 0.01%, people should state the following information.

“Harmful to aquatic organisms, may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment”

The silica gel desiccant is made of sodium silicate and sulfuric acid. The sodium silicate chooses natural silica sand as the raw material. The desiccant can be used as the food addiitive and the stable*safe substance of filtration materials. So it is not the controlled target of PRTR law.

To know the moisture-absorption property of desiccant by check the colour degradation from blue to peachblow, a kind of product that contains 0.1% cobalt dichloride indicator has been used for many years. It is often called [Mixed blue gel]

Cobalt is a necessary element of the human body, but it is reported that it has the possibility of causing cancer, so when made the PRTR law, Cobalt was appointed as the first series of chemical substances.

According to the law of PRTR, if the first appointed material is less than 1.00%, you need not to declare it as the controlled target of PRTR. In this case, the [Mixed blue gel] product can be still used as before.

Recently, to meet the requirement of environment and to provide the safe products, Our company develops the new humidity indicator「ECO BLUE」that can be substituted for cobalt dichloride humidity indicator, and gets the products into the market.

[ECO BLUE induction humidity indicator] is different from the orange induction humidity indicator in China market. The colour degradation is also from deep blue to red like the [allochroic silica gel] before, so the color degradation is similar to the old product and is a humidity indicating silica gel that can be easily accepted by people.

Organic allochroic silica gel is with the same color degradation of the cobalt dichloride allochroic silica gel, the moisture-absorption condition can be confirmed easily by eye. The most important is that it contains no heavy metals, so it is the environment-friendly indicating silica gel.

We need notice that the color degradation of cobalt dichloride allochroic silica gel is : blue to light blue, then change to light red, and then to peach color.
The color degradation of organic allochroic silica gel is: deep blue to deep purple( below 10%RH), then to deep red purple (below 20%RH), and then dark red( below 30%RH), finally bright red( below 40%Rh). It is with the characteristic that the color changes from blue to red rapidly.