FINDING HAZARD INFORMATION MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEETS MSDSS

Finding Hazard Information Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) Describes some good resources with information about hazards of chemicals and how they might be used. 

FINDING HAZARD INFORMATION MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEETS (MSDSS)... 

If you want to know about the hazards of a chemical, one source is its Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). MSDSs, prepared by chemical suppliers, describe properties and information pertinent to the safety of specific chemicals. In 1980 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) wrote a regulation called the Hazard Communication Standard that required all chemical suppliers provide MSDSs to chemical users." Some of the information found in MSDSs was recorded more than 4000 years ago in hieroglyphs by the Egyptians in their tombs and papyrus records. In today s world you can find MSDSs at many sites on the Internet. When any company or individual purchases a chemical for the first time, many suppliers provide a paper copy of the MSDS with the shipment of that chemical. Alternatively, some may only provide you with access to their electronic database of MSDSs. 

SDSs used to be Material Data Safety Sheets (MSDSs) and the implementation of the GHS requires this change. Most of the content of this section refers equally well to SDSs and MSDSs. Historical references are more about MSDSs and current comments are about SDSs. You need to be comfortable in reading both kinds of documents, but they are so similar in nature except SDSs have information about GHS hazard identification that you will not find in MSDSs. We will refer mostly to SDSs in this section, with a few exceptions. 

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