The ATEX directive was originally published as Directive 94/9/EC in 1994. Under the New Legislative Framework, the ATEX Directive 94/9/EC was replaced by 2014/34/EU. The directive harmonises the various requirements within the EU with the aim of ensuring a uniform level of safety and removing trade barriers.

The guidelines cover personal protection and govern basic health and safety requirements as well as minimum regulations. This includes the regulation stating that potential sources of ignition that could cause an explosion must be excluded.

Wheels and castors are only indirectly affected by the ATEX directive. They are not devices or protection systems per se, but are components used in various technical applications and are not produced specifically for devices and protective systems. The determination of conformity takes place in the course of the conformity assessment for the entire product. Thus, the device manufacturer must ensure that its overall product complies with the ATEX directive.

Blickle Räder+Rollen GmbH u. Co. KG, as a manufacturer of wheels and castors, can only contribute to directive compliance by recommending electrically conductive or antistatic wheels and castors. Exceptions are wheels made of steel or cast iron, which may cause sparking in cases of collisions or due to subflooring.

The US Dodd-Frank Act has been legally binding since July 2010. This law applies only to companies listed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act seeks to ensure that certain materials, such as tantalum, tungsten, tin or gold, the so-called "conflict minerals", are not sourced from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its neighbouring states because of the civil war that is taking place there.

The requirements of the law extend throughout the supply chain, but with no immediate effect outside the US.

In Europe, there is no comparable directive or substance restriction, so that even the products or raw materials concerned may continue to be legally imported and placed on the internal market.

As a responsible company, we nevertheless take the necessary measures to verify whether the products supplied to you contain raw materials from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighbouring countries. We meet this obligation every time we deliver a product to you.

On the basis of an ongoing dialogue with our suppliers, we currently have no legitimate reason to believe that the raw materials used in our products could come from the crisis region mentioned. We declare our company as "conflict free" in the sense of the "Dodd-Frank Act".

On 6 December 2013, the existing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) regulation in Annex XVII of REACh Regulation 1907/2006 was expanded. From 27 December 2015, PAH content in rubber and plastic articles subject to prolonged skin or mouth contact will be limited to 1 mg/kg per PAH.

Furthermore, the PAH limits of the GS specification of the Product Safety Committee "AfPS GS 2014: 01 PAK" have also been tightened.

Since our products (wheels and castors) do not belong to the category of components that have foreseeable long-term or recurring skin contact during use, our products (wheels and castors) are not affected by the above mentioned regulations.

However, we can offer rubber wheels and castors on request that meet the above limits. The corresponding confirmations of our rubber material supplier, as well as the test results of an independent institute commissioned by us, are available.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are organic chemicals that have specific properties:

• Persistence over a long period of time

• Potential for long-distance transport

• Accumulation in the food chain

• Toxic to humans and animals

On 29 April 2004, Regulation (EC) No. 850/2004 set out detailed requirements for production, circulation, use and release of POPs for the Member States of the EU. The aim of the regulation, in line with the precautionary principle, is to protect human health and the environment from POPs.

We hereby confirm that we comply with the requirements of the regulation and that our products are free from persistent organic pollutants (POPs, according to Regulation (EC) No. 850/2004 Annex I).

The REACh Regulation (EC) No. 1907/2006 introduced a comprehensive restructuring of the policy for chemicals. REACh fundamentally harmonised chemicals law. The aim is to protect people and the environment and to collect all information on chemical substances in Europe centrally.

For the first time, a chemicals law also covers substances in manufactured articles. As a manufacturer of products, Blickle Räder + Rollen GmbH & Co. KG is therefore obliged to inform users if substances of very high concern (SVHC) are included in our products.

Following the entry into force of the REACh Regulation in June 2007, we began to regularly test our product range for SVHCs. Should a substance on the SVHC candidate list be included in one of our products at a rate of over 0.1% by mass, we will immediately comply with our disclosure obligation in accordance with Article 33 of the REACh Regulation.

Link to the current SVHC candidate list: https://echa.europa.eu/candidate-list-table

The title of the RoHS Directive is "Directive 2011/65/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2011 on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment".

This EU directive was implemented in national law with the publication of the "Ordinance on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment" (ElektroStoffV) on 9 May 2013.

On 4 June 2015, the Delegated Directive 2015/863/EU added four more substances to the list of hazardous substances.

The products from Blickle Räder + Rollen GmbH & Co. KG are not electrical or electronic devices, which is why the regulation does not apply to our products.

However, as our wheels and castors are also mounted on electrical or electronic equipment, we do not use materials in our products that exceed the limits of the substances listed in Annex II. We can therefore confirm conformity to RoHS.