A printing company in Maryland recently purchased a fax-on-demand service for retrieving material safety data sheets (MSDS). The phones on the shop floor were all labeled with the 800 number for contacting the service. All the employee had to do was call the number and obtain the current MSDS on any chemical he or she needed.
The company had the service a short time when an employee got a rash from a solvent that had spilled on his hand. His co-workers called the MSDS service and took the employee to a hospital a couple of miles away. By the time they got there, the most up-to-date version of the chemical's MSDS had been faxed and forwarded to the hospital, and the fax service was on the phone with the hospital staff providing them with information about the chemical and its treatment. Thanks to the quick transmittal of information and treatment, the employee returned to work that day.