Material Safety Data Sheets

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been charged with overseeing the law that requires that every employee of every business be made aware of every hazard associated with every chemical they are working with.  That means that, no matter what you are asked to do, you are allowed to know the hazards associated with every chemical you use.  This requirement has lead to the concept of the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS).  The MSDS is simply a listing of every known hazard for a given chemical, and the correct responses for handling emergencies should one arise from the use of these chemicals.

It is important to note that everything is made of chemicals.  Whether we think of it or not, every cleanser we use, every food we eat, every chair we sit on, everything is chemical in nature.  Companies try to trick us with terms like “chemical free;” in fact, nothing, short of a perfect vacuum, is chemical free; the best we can hope for is free of chemicals that might be harmful to us, such as pesticides.  Because everything is comprised of chemicals, there are MSDS sheets for just about everything you use, including toner for copiers, “White-Out” (for those few who remember this product), and even white board markers.

By law, the supervisor of your building should have a complete set of MSDS sheets for every chemical in your building available for you to view at any time.  Ask your supervisor where these are kept, so you know right where to go to look up information on anything you are working with.  Following is a sample MSDS, which we will use to demonstrate the information contained within an MSDS and the correct way to interpret the information.  Although MSDS sheets from different sources may look slightly different, they all contain the same basic information.