Common questions about the assessment criteria:

 2. The BASTA criteria are based on substance properties rather than a list of which hazardous substances should be avoided. What are the advantages of this approach?

3. Why is there a difference in the requirements for chemical products and other construction products?

4. Why does the BASTA system allow hazardous substances to be present in the products at all? Why aren´t they completely banned?

5. Are all products that are not registered in BASTA hazardous?

6. The BASTA criteria contain a list of substance properties, but they also identify three specific substances/metals. Why specify these three?

7. Why doesn´t the BASTA system include endocrine disruption amongst the identified properties?

8. Why doesn´t the BASTA system provide any assessment of the environmental impacts of the product manufacture?

9. Does the BASTA system take work environment issues into consideration in the assessment?

10. How does the BASTA system deal with a product that has different properties at delivery and after has been built in, e.g. thermoset plastic?

11. Does the BASTA system have the same concentration thresholds as the safety datasheets reporting requirements?

12. How does BASTA relate to EU and Swedish chemicals legislation?

13. Why can´t products made of stainless steel be registered in BASTA? Does this mean that I should avoid stainless steel products?

Common questions from users of the BASTA products

15. How can I find out what a BASTA registered product contains?

16. What do I need to be able to search in the BASTA system? How much does it cost?

17. What should I do not find the product I am searching for in the BASTA system?

18. What is the best way to formulate my specification for building material to avoid hazardous substances?

19. Is it more expensive to build with BASTA registered products?

20. I would really like to know which products do not meet the BASTA criteria. Why isn´t this information available in the database?

Some common questions from suppliers

22. What do I have to gain as a supplier by registering my products in the BASTA system?

23. Do I have to report the composition of my products when I register them in the BASTA system?

24. We do not have any chemists in our company. Can we still register our products in the BASTA system?

25. Why doesn´t BASTA allow me to label my registered products with the BASTA symbol?

26. How do I join BASTA?

Other common questions

29. Who assesses/approves the products before they are registered in the BASTA system?

30. Is it intended that the BASTA system will replace the use of building product declarations?

31. Who is responsible for the BASTA system?

Answers

Common questions about the assessment criteria:

2. The BASTA criteria are based on substance properties rather than a list of which hazardous substances should be avoided. What are the advantages of this approach?
Most lists of substances contain only examples of substances that have certain undesirable properties. By instead specifying which properties are undesirable, the BASTA system is not limited to phasing out only the substances on a list; instead, all substances with these properties are covered by the criteria. Furthermore, by using properties criteria instead of substance lists the burden of proof is shifted to the supplier of an article. The supplier must “prove" that the substances in the product meet the criteria.

3. Why is there a difference in the requirements for chemical products and other construction products?
Certain basic requirements, for the most hazardous properties (so-called CMR and vPvB/PBT properties) are common for all products in the BASTA system. For certain other properties we can go a step further for chemical products, since these products have long been controlled by chemical legislation, and suppliers can therefore be expected to have better knowledge of the chemical composition.  Harder criteria can also be justified for chemical products from the perspective that the substances are not bound in the chemical product in the way that they often are in other products, and are therefore more readily available to directly affect human health and the environment. The intention is that requirements for both types of products will gradually be tightened in the future.

4. Why does the BASTA system allow hazardous substances to be present in the products at all? Why aren´t they completely banned?
In practice, it is very hard to prove that a product is completely free from a substance with certain properties. A supplier can be sure of what he himself has added to the article but it is often hard to get complete information about whether any components that are used contain substances at levels below which they are required to be declared in the safety datasheet.  The BASTA concentration thresholds have therefore been set to agree with the reporting requirements of safety datasheets as far as possible.

5. Are all products that are not registered in BASTA hazardous?
The BASTA system is a positive system. All products registered in the system have a guarantee from the supplier that they meet the properties criteria. There are many reasons why a product may not be included in the system. The supplier may not know what the product contains, and in that case it cannot be registered. Or the supplier may know what the product contains but may not be able to determine which properties the contents have —it cannot be registered in this case either, even if the contents actually are completely harmless. It may also be the case that the supplier chooses not to register his products in the BASTA system for some other reason; participation in the BASTA system is completely voluntary.
It is not possible to draw any conclusions from the fact that a product is not registered in BASTA. It is therefore advisable to prioritise those products that are registered; the supplier has confirmed that the products meet the properties criteria and that the company has documentation to support this in the case of an audit.

6. The BASTA criteria contain a list of substance properties, but they also identify three specific substances/metals. Why specify these three?
The three specified metals — lead, cadmium and mercury — have been identified by the Swedish government as particularly hazardous. They are included in the Environmental Objective  “A non-toxic environment" and it has been decided that newly produced articles must be as free from these metals as possible by 2010 at the latest (2003 for mercury). We have therefore already chosen to include them as BASTA phasing out criteria now.

7. Why doesn´t the BASTA system include endocrine disruption amongst the identified properties?
It is very important to phase out endocrine disrupting substances from the ecocycle. However, it is currently difficult to know how to define this property. All of the other properties in the BASTA system are based on established and generally accepted definitions. But since no established definition for endocrine disruption currently exists we have chosen not to include this property at the moment. The same argument can be given for the properties ‘potential endocrine disrupter´, ‘potentially persistent´, ‘bioaccumulating and toxic´ and ‘potentially very persistent and very bioaccumulating´. As soon as a recognised definition has been developed these properties will be included in the BASTA criteria.

8. Why doesn´t the BASTA system provide any assessment of the environmental impacts of the product manufacture?
The objective of BASTA is to phase out hazardous substances from the construction industry, to break the flow of such substances. It may also be desirable to phase out substances that are found in the manufacturing process, but many of the manufacturing processes take place in well-controlled closed systems no, or very little, impact on their surroundings. This contrasts greatly with the construction and usage phases which are considerably harder to control. The BASTA system has therefore chosen to assess the products´ properties when delivered to the construction site.

9. Does the BASTA system take work environment issues into consideration in the assessment?
The BASTA properties criteria are divided into two main groups. The first is health aspects. The criteria in this group aim to improve both the work environment on the construction site and the indoor environment for those who spend time in the building in the operative phase. The other main group contains criteria that are important to reduce the spreading of hazardous substances in the surrounding environment.

10. How does the BASTA system deal with a product that has different properties at delivery and after has been built in, e.g. thermoset plastic?
In the BASTA system we have chosen to assess a product based on its properties at the time of delivery to the construction site. Many thermoset plastics have properties at the time of delivery that exclude it from the BASTA register. When the many of these plastics have set, the properties are such that they could be included in the register if the product had been delivered in that form. The BASTA criteria aim to improve both the outer and work environments during the building phase, which is why it is not permitted to register such products in the system.

11. Does the BASTA system have the same concentration thresholds as the safety datasheets reporting requirements?
Yes (where appropriate).

12. How does BASTA relate to EU and Swedish chemicals legislation?
One of the reasons that BASTA was created was to help the construction industry to adapt to current legislation. The Environmental Code puts the responsibility for investigation and assessment of products on the supplier, whilst the user shall replace hazardous substances with less hazardous ones. The BASTA system also contributes clearly to meeting the government Environmental Objective of a Non-toxic environment within one generation. The new EU chemical legislation, REACH, has brought EU legislation closer to the Swedish standpoint.

13. Why can´t products made of stainless steel be registered in BASTA? Does this mean that I should avoid stainless steel products?
Stainless steel is an alloy that contains nickel. This is a substance that is suspected to be carcinogenic, which is a property specified in BASTA´s properties criteria. This is basic reason why stainless steel products cannot be registered in the BASTA system. If one chooses to use such an article, then one a decision should be made about which risks are associated. We can however note that the risk that nickel should leak out into the surroundings and cause cancer is normally considered very small, and several of the partners in BASTA have decided to continue to accept stainless steel products in their construction projects. This is the way that all companies should react when they want to use a product that is not registered in the BASTA system. Is there an alternative? If not, what are the risks and how can they be minimised? 

Common questions from users of the BASTA products

14. How certain can I be as a purchaser that a product registered in BASTA does not contain hazardous substances?
The BASTA system builds on the suppliers´ self declaration. After signing an agreement where the supplier certifies that all registered products meet the properties criteria, and that the supplier can provide documentation to support the registration in the case of an audit, the supplier can enter their own products in the register. The suppliers´ commitments of responsibility and the validation process (auditing) creates a credible environment. The criteria have concentration thresholds for substances with known hazardous properties, so these substances may be present at levels below the threshold.

15. How can I find out what a BASTA registered product contains?
The BASTA system is based on simplicity and provides you as a purchaser with the information that the product composition meets certain properties criteria. BASTA does not provide you with any information about what the article actually contains. Instead, this information can be found in Building Product Declarations, or, in some cases in the safety datasheet for chemical products.

16. What do I need to be able to search in the BASTA system? How much does it cost?
The BASTA system database is freely available from our website at www.bastaonline.se. Anyone can search for products in the database and it is free of charge. It is also possible to create an on-line link between your internal company article database, calculation system etc. Such a link is available to so-called system customers, who pay an annual charge.

17. What should I do not find the product I am searching for in the BASTA system?
If you have decided to use a certain product and discover that it is not in the BASTA system then you should ask the supplier to find out whether the product meets the properties criteria. If the product does meet the criteria (and if the supplier also meets the other requirements, see Terms of Agreement) then you should encourage the supplier to register the product in the database. If the supplier cannot provide you with a satisfactory answer on this point, you should consider replacing the product with a similar product that is found in the database. If you cannot find a suitable substitute in the BASTA register, you may have to use the product anyway but you should ensure that you minimise the risks associated with the product as much as possible.

18. What is the best way to formulate my specification for building material to avoid hazardous substances?
It is not reasonable to stipulate that only products registered with BASTA should be used in a construction project. Sometimes a certain technical function requires the use of hazardous substances, sometimes certain products can have other environmental properties that are particularly good and the product may therefore be a wise choice despite not featuring in the database. But when a product is not registered in the BASTA database then this should be interpreted as a signal for caution. One could specify the following requirements: “Unless otherwise agreed, the products used, within a certain product group, should meet the properties requirements of the BASTA system." By also specifying that “It must be possible to support this in a reliable way." one also places a demand on the quality of the information provided and one way to prove this is to register the products in the BASTA database. In the case where one wishes to use a product that does not meet the criteria, or that is not registered in the BASTA database, the above requirements demand that an investigation of possible alternatives is made, or that an assessment of how to minimise any risks associated with using the product is made.

19. Is it more expensive to build with BASTA registered products?
Chemical control is a costly activity and many purchasers of construction material go through the same control work. The aim of this sector-wide system is to create a solution that is more cost efficient for the whole construction sector. Whether a product registered in BASTA is more or less expensive than others depends on factors completely external to the BASTA system. We do, however, judge that projects built without hazardous chemical substances have a considerably lower risk of being hit by unpleasant clean-up costs or bad will.

20. I would really like to know which products do not meet the BASTA criteria. Why isn´t this information available in the database?
We have decided that only products that meet the criteria can be registered in the BASTA system. All other products should be treated with caution, until the opposite can be proved. So we do not make any differentiation between a product that the supplier knows contains a hazardous substance and another product for which the supplier simply does not know what it contains. In this way, we choose not to punish the honest suppliers who indicate that a product contains a hazardous substance. By focusing on products that meet the criteria we want to help to make it easier to choose products that are free from the most hazardous substances.

Some common questions from suppliers

21. What is required of me as a supplier in order to be able to register products in the BASTA system? How much does it cost?
You need a password to log in to our website at www.bastaonline.se in order to register products. You are issued with a password when you have signed an agreement where you guarantee that you have documentation to support the claim that the products meet the properties criteria. You do not need to be a chemist, but you do need to have access to the competence required to assess whether the product components meet the criteria or not. You pay an annual charge of twelve thousand Swedish kronor (irrespective of the number of registered articles) to be included in the database.

22. What do I have to gain as a supplier by registering my products in the BASTA system?
The BASTA system is an industry-wide definition of which substance properties the construction industry wants to phase out. Since the Ecocycle Council adopted the BASTA system and its properties criteria, many companies have abandoned their old substance lists which you, as a supplier, had to evaluate your products against. By registering your products in the BASTA system you can avoid the hassle of substance lists. Several of the companies that have abandoned their substance lists have given priority in product selection to products registered in BASTA. Since the BASTA system is to a large extent built on the new EU chemical legislation REACH, participation in BASTA helps you to be an early adapter to this legislation.

23. Do I have to report the composition of my products when I register them in the BASTA system?
Registration of a product in the BASTA system simply means that you, as a supplier, certify that the product meets the properties criteria. The only information that you register about a product is the article number, article name and sometimes some information about measurements/size. No information about what the product contains is registered in the system. However, during a BASTA audit you are obliged to be able to account for the contents of a product and other documentation which supports your claim that the product meets the properties criteria. The auditors´ work is confidential. Any reporting of the contents of a construction product is made via other systems — in safety datasheets for chemical products and in building product declarations. There are strong demands from many quarters for a declaration of composition, in order to be able to control what is actually built into each construction project. 

24. We do not have any chemists in our company. Can we still register our products in the BASTA system?
All suppliers of construction products are welcome to register their products. When you sign an agreement with us to participate in the BASTA system you must specify how you have access to experts that can judge which environmental and health properties your products have. You can use consultants to do this work when you register products; they do not need to be employed by your company. The important thing is that the person that confirms whether a product meets the BASTA system properties criteria really knows the implication of the criteria. The competence requirements that we demand of this expert are stated in the agreement.

25. Why doesn´t BASTA allow me to label my registered products with the BASTA symbol?
The BASTA system is an assessment of a construction product from the point of view of its chemical composition. Products that do not contain substances with certain hazardous properties (properties criteria) may be registered in the system´s database. With this limited assessment is it not possible to claim that a BASTA registered product is a “good environmental choice" in all respects. A BASTA label could be perceived as an environmental label like The Swan (Svanen), the EU flower and others, which would not be fair to the customer. However, it is both permitted and encouraged that a reference to the BASTA registration is made in product sheets, building product declarations and suchlike, where an explanation of what the BASTA registration means can be included. 

26. How do I join BASTA?
Everything you need to know can be found on our website at www.bastaonline.se under ‘Sign up as supplier´. You can study the agreement that you must sign before you can register articles in the database. You can also study the properties criteria that each product that you register must meet in detail. The next step is to register the basic information about your company and when you have done this you can print out the agreement, ensure that a certified signatory signs it and send it to us together with a copy of the company registration. When we have received the agreement we will issue you with a password which allows you to register products that meet the criteria.

Other common questions

27. How is BASTA different from other systems that are already applied to the construction industry?
There are two main things that differentiate BASTA from previously established systems. The first is that in the BASTA system it is the supplier who is responsible for information gathering and assessment. The second difference is that the assessment criteria are based on the intrinsic properties of the substance rather than their documented risks. We will not be compiling lists of substances that are not allowed in BASTA registered products. However, the Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemikalieinspektionen) PRIO database can be used as example list of example substances with undesirable properties.

28. What kinds of products can be registered in BASTA?
The BASTA system is open for all kinds of construction products which are built in to all kinds of constructions. This includes chemicals, homogeneous materials and more complex composite products. All of these can be registered in the BASTA system. The system´s database is divided into 18 different product groups, covering both traditional construction products and different kinds of installation material; there are no limitations.

29. Who assesses/approves the products before they are registered in the BASTA system?
It is entirely the responsibility of the supplier to determine whether a product meets the properties criteria and therefore whether it may be registered in the system. The burden of proof lies entirely with those that are expected best to know the product, its composition and its environmental impacts. There is no other inspection of the suppliers´ information before the product is registered. However, randomly selected audits of suppliers are part of the system. These audits assure the credibility of the system in a cost efficient way.

30. Is it intended that the BASTA system will replace the use of building product declarations?
BASTA and building product declarations have two different purposes. A product registered in the BASTA system meets certain properties criteria regarding hazardousness of the components; a simple system of qualification which aims to phase out substances with particularly hazardous properties. Nothing else! A building product declaration is a systematic way of conveying a complete picture of a product´s environmental properties, from cradle to grave. Its intended use is as background material for a more complete environmental assessment of a construction product, or to compare different products´ properties from a certain environmental perspective. Building product declarations are also an important as documentation of the product´s composition, recommendations for use, maintenance and how it should be disposed of. So the BASTA system is not in any way intended to replace building product declarations; it is a simple aid for those who do not have the capacity to assess the declaration of composition in a building product declaration.

31. Who is responsible for the BASTA system?
The initiative to BASTA was taken a few years ago by a number of construction companies and the Swedish Construction Federation with the aim of simplifying and streamlining work to phase out the most hazardous chemical substances from construction products. A consortium was formed in autumn 2003 consisting of NCC, JM, Skanska, Peab and the Swedish Construction Federation, now also complemented by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute who runs the development work. Economic support from the EU Commission LIFE fund was arranged. During the development of the system and the properties criteria, several more companies and organisations have joined the partnership and supported the BASTA project, including support from the Ecocycle Council. Since 2007, BASTA has been run as a non-profit making limited company, owned jointly by IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and the Swedish Construction Federation.