Europe’s Reduction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive identifies six hazardous substances and their maximum permissible levels within electrical and electronic equipment. RoHS imposes upon producers of such goods responsibility for knowing whether their finished products contain these substances and whether the contents are within the regulatory limits.

The accountabilities imposed by RoHS affect the relationship and transactions between producers of electrical and electronic equipment, their suppliers and the sub-suppliers. Many suppliers have taken responsibility for applying themselves to ensuring that what they feed into the supply chain is RoHS compliant. Their customers are most often ready and willing to have the suppliers accept such responsibility and its costs. They trust their suppliers and their self-generated certificates of compliance.

Once the threats of criminal and financial consequences for noncompliance were introduced into the equation a “better safe than sorry” response became prevalent up and down the supply chain. We trust, but we must verify. The inevitable outcome was a tremendous increase in product testing.

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