This news update, GHS Chemical Labeling Requirements, is brought to you by Safety+Health.
OSHA’s final Hazard Communication Standard deadline around the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals is quickly approaching. That means all customers must be fully compliant with the requirements, including those for Safety Data Sheets and chemical container labels, by June 1 of this year. Because of this deadline, many chemical users need to resolve detailed implementation issues that often get overlooked in GHS presentations or summaries.
One of these situations is determining how to handle the chemicals that have been ordered prior to the past year that are still on your shelves. Do you need to re-label these older chemicals?
To answer this question, you first need to determine if you have chemicals on your shelves without GHS labels. Under GHS, OSHA required all chemical manufacturers to begin shipping their chemicals with compliant labels by June 1, 2015. OSHA also provided distributors with an additional six months (up to Dec. 1, 2015) to make sure their inventories were updated and they were shipping chemicals with compliant labels. With this in mind, it’s entirely possible you may have ordered a chemical from your distributor before December of last year and received containers that have the previously used “right-to-know” or NFPA diamond labels.
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