For chemical and manufacturing companies, safety data is nothing new. Material safety data sheets and container labels have been the core components of OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) since 1983. Most companies managed to comply by way of manual tools—including spreadsheets or homegrown chemical inventory databases.
But now there’s a “Final Rule” in hazard communication compliance. To keep American industry aligned with international standards—namely the United Nation’s Globally Harmonized System (GHS)—companies have to redress chemical classification and labeling. And it’s creating a lot of extra work.