By Jennifer Kho

A new Chinese law restricting the use of some hazardous substances took effect Thursday, confusing and concerning some electronics manufacturers that sell to China.

The law, known as RoHS, restricts the use of lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and two flame retardants, polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ethers in electronic equipment. It mimics a European Union directive that took effect in July (see Green Card Required, EU Ban Opens E-Waste Market), but disparities between the two laws, including different labeling requirements, penalties, and exemptions, were enough to send some manufacturers scrambling to sort out their obligations.

“We’re trying to figure it out,” said Kevin Ashton, vice president of marketing at ThingMagic, a Massachusetts-based company that makes radio-frequency-identification-tag (RFID) readers. Mr. Ashton said his company has been looking through lists of hundreds of components to see if any that are exempted from the EU law might be prohibited in China.

“While [the law] is obviously a good thing, we have to go through it and be very careful,” he said. “Sometimes we run into long lead times because only one manufacturer has the part, and we’re in the back of the line because we’re little.”

Mr. Ashton said the laws impact smaller companies more than large ones, slowing adoption of some emerging technologies, such as RFID in Europe. “That doesn’t mean its bad or that it shouldn’t be there, but it does have an impact,” he said.

David Douglas, vice president of Eco Responsibility at Sun Microsystems, agreed that RoHS laws are more likely to hurt smaller players. Sun has a team of employees that track regulations, and believes it’s already fully compliant with the China law, Mr. Douglas said.

Both companies say their main concern is that future regulations in other countries might conflict with those they’ve already worked to meet. Neither wants to make different products for different countries, which would increase costs and render them less competitive.

“Different countries are going to do this, and we’ve got to hope like heck all the countries are going to do the same thing—either stick with the EU’s or with China’s standard,” Mr. Ashton said. “Otherwise, we’re going to have to keep making changes, and might eventually need to create different products for different countries, which we really don’t want to do.”