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Last changed: 08/10/2010
To protect water, the Federal Water Act (Article 19g) requires that installations for handling substances constituting a hazard to water must be built and operated in such a manner that no contamination of waters, or any other detrimental change in their properties is to be feared. To ensure this, substances used in such installations must be tested and classified for their water-hazardous properties. Classification is carried out on the basis of the Administrative Regulation on the Classification of Substances hazardous to waters into Water Hazard Classes (Verwaltungssvorschrift wassergefährdende Stoffe (VwVwS) and Background) of 17 May 1999. The amendment to the VwVwS of 27 July 2005 (in German, PDF / 158 KB entered into force on 1 August 2005.
There are three water hazard classes (WGK):
1: low hazard to waters
2: hazard to waters
3: severe hazard to waters
Classification of a substance into Water Hazard Classes can result from:
The WGK of a mixture of substances can be determined according to annex 4 of the new VwVwS either by using a calculating rule and the WGK of each compound of the mixture or on basis of ecotoxicological test data determined on the mixture. Central collection and publishing of Water Hazard Classes according to annex 4 does not take place (Background).
From now on the Office of Documentation and Information on Substances hazardous to waters at the Federal Environment Agency accepts classifications according to the new classification system in annex 3 of the VwVwS. Classifiers are asked to use a special form for their documentations (WGK-Documentation). An online documentation is in progress.