Compliance With Foreign Environmental Health and Safety Regulations

Most U.S.-based companies have fairly sophisticated environmental, health and safety (EHS) programs that are designed to ensure compliance with applicable EHS rules and regulations. The reasons for such programs are obvious: EHS compliance represents the floor for most, if not all companies, and non-compliant companies are likely to experience adverse financial, environmental, health and safety impacts as a result of non-compliance.

In order to be compliant, companies obviously must be able to identify applicable EHS rules and regulations. Although companies’ EHS programs are generally well designed to identify applicable U.S. rules and regulations, these programs may overlook non-U.S. EHS laws and regulations that can also impact U.S.-based companies’ ability to market products not only abroad, but in the United States as well. An example of such “overlooked” rules and regulations may be recent EHS directives/regulations promulgated by the European Union and its individual “Member States.”