take this ‘new concept / group’ as a European wide forum but even from the onset we got a lot of interest from the major mwf specialist companies with their H & S professionals coming to the meetings in the UK.


Ironically, a few years after the MWFPSG was set up in the UK, Eddie Hateley, who by then was President of UEIL ,asked if I would take on the activity of their Health and Environment Committee. We changed the emphasis of that group along similar lines to the UKLA MWFPSG and that created a European aspect to the activities we had first envisaged might not be possible. Incidentally I stayed on as chair of that group for about 8 years – there was no escape!


The UKLA MWFPSG has continued to thrive I believe because there is a continued need for an open non-competitive forum to discuss many of the growing Health, Safety and Environmental issues that affect each of the members that have a direct or supporting connection to the MWF industry. The longevity of the group and the continued significant level of support over a 25-year period is proof of that initial feeling that this was something as relevant to the industry today as it was then.’


Cliff Betton of Castrol UK Ltd, was the first Chairman of the Group and amongst the key issues of concern at the time included exposure to MWFs by machine operators with the HSE having published a survey of thirty-one engineering companies ranging in size from eight to forty thousand employees who used both water mix and neat oils. The majority of sites surveyed were rated “good” or “very good” with respect to control of occupational exposure and MWF sump management. However, five of the sites had high sump bacterial counts which tended to reflect poor control of fluid strength and/or pH.


The second issue was the Classification and Labelling of Substances and Preparations. The present and future requirements to place warning labels on MWFs containing some substances was a cause for concern for the MWF industry. The requirements arose from certain EU Directives which have been incorporated into UK legislation as the ‘CHIP’ Regulations.


The requirements are listed for several thousand substances in Annex 1 of the 1967 Dangerous Substances Directive and in the UK as the Approved Supply List.


48 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.188 AUGUST 2025


At the time classifications were based on the results of toxicity tests on experimental animals and on human epidemiology. It was believed that this may have presented a problem in the case of MWFs in that chemicals in the sumps may be derivatives of the chemicals originally added.


The group also considered what it believed to be ‘problem compounds’, such as Triazines, a group of compounds produced by reacting formaldehyde with alkanolamines such as monoethanolamine and known as “triazines” in the MWF industry although they were not triazines in any chemical sense. One of these compounds-- hexahydro-1,3,5-tris(2- hydroxyethyl)-s-triazine (referred to hereafter as HHT and identified as CAS number 4719-04-4) is listed under Annex 1 with the requirement to carry the R43 label (may cause skin sensitisation) in preparations containing 0.1% or more of HHT. At first this would appear surprising since the Preparations Directive sets the concentration for labelling preparations containing Annex 1 sensitising substances at 1%. The requirement for labelling HHT is relevant for MWFs since the recommended sump concentration for bacterial control is 0.15%.


The third issue of concern were Boron containing products.


Amine borates are used to increase buffering capacity in the MWF, improving corrosion and make the fluid more resistant to the effects of bioactivity in aqueous MWFs and there was concern that they may eventually be required to be labelled in the same way as boric acid or inorganic borates. The group believed that this would appear to be inappropriate unless the amine borates are shown to have similar toxicological properties to the inorganic boron compounds.


In the year 2000, there were nineteen group members including Castrol, Polartech now Italmatch, Nipa Laboratories, Lubrizol, Croda, Houghton now Quaker Houghton, DA Stuart, TotalEnergies, Fuchs and Q8Oils.


Now the group includes international members from Europe including Blaser and Condat, and strong links with both the North American Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association, ILMA, and UEIL the European association of independent lubricant companies.


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