The new GHS standards are likely leaving you and your company thinking about conversion and conversion only. But conversion itself is not the only service that you will need, however, and so Quantum offers many corollary GHS SDS compliance services to help you meet the June 2015 deadline easily and with as little effort as possible required from your company’s end.
Converting your company’s MSDSs to GHS formatted SDSs brings with it several smaller projects inherent to the process. Simply changing the formatting of a traditional material safety data sheet does not render it completely compliant with new standards. Many elements of the new GHS safety data sheets are not required of the former MSDSs, and so compliance services like Quantum’s must work to insert those features into the sheets we deliver to you at the end of the conversion process.
One good example of the side processes involved comes in the GHS requirement for new sets of words that must be included on all safety data sheets and GHS hazard labels for chemicals. Hazard statements were not standardized previous to the 2012 revision of the UN GHS, and so authoring your company’s SDSs will necessitate an examination of the substance or mixture’s hazards and the assignment of the corresponding GHS hazard statement. This process, however, is not actually included in the basic “conversion” one, instead acting as its own supplementary project. It is a small part of the total SDS authoring process, but is essential to total GHS compliance and so your company cannot afford to overlook it during the conversion process. Using services such as Quantum’s can help you to ensure that every single part of the SDS compliance process is completed in an efficient and comprehensive way, using intensive professional standards to exempt your company from the need to spend time and resources examining each document carefully.
Of those hazard statements, in fact, 30% of the total presented material can be of your company’s own offering. You will be able to retain a few of the phrases your customers are comfortable with, to ensure a smooth transition between formats. However, the other 70% will still have to be based on the GHS hazard classifications. When we begin the process of creating GHS SDSs based on your old MSDSs, a key part that you may not realize is separating the statements specific to your company from generic ones your MSDSs include. This is a service that is completely different from the actual conversion process, and it is one that requires a lot of time and energy for precise completion.
The new GHS statements are based on hazard classifications, which are dependent on the hazards inherent to a chemical or mixture. The testing requirements for GHS are new: only pure substances require testing, but those tests can be old ones whose results are just interpreted for GHS classification – no new tests are required. Mixtures, on the other hand, do not require any tests at all. Rather, their hazard classifications are based on a complex system of calculations to determine which characteristics of the substance’s components it will display. Precision in this area is critical, so as not to overclassify or underclassify the chemical, and so it is important to conduct the MSDS to SDS process using a service with a comprehensive algorithm like the one Quantum’s team has developed to perfectly place your chemical in the right hazard classification groups.
In a similar capacity, Quantum prides itself on being able to offer your company other small but essential services like checking physical properties and GHS phrases, assigning chemicals to one or more of the new hazard classifications, and many others. When your company approaches the conversion process, you should look for a way to create the new GHS SDS in the lowest amount of steps possible, and so should find a system that offers every part of complete SDS authoring while requiring no more than one step for your company.
