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COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN OSHA • MAJOR CHANGES ARE BEING PLANNED FOR THE US HAZARD COMMUNICATION STANDARD. NOT ALL IN INDUSTRY ARE HAPPY WITH THE PROPOSALS THE US OCCUPATIONAL Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) this past 16 February, aiming to update the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) to align with the seventh revised edition of the UN Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). The rulemaking also aims to address some issues that arose during the implementation of the 2012 update of HCS and to better align with other federal agencies and international trading partners. The proposed modifications to the standard include revised criteria for classification of certain health and physical hazards, revised provisions for updating labels, new labelling provisions for small containers, technical
amendments related to the contents of safety data sheets (SDSs), and related revisions to definitions of terms used in the standard. OSHA says it has preliminary determined that the proposed revisions “will enhance the effectiveness of the HCS by ensuring employees are appropriately apprised of the chemical hazards to which they may be exposed, thus reducing the incidence of chemical-related occupational illnesses and injuries”. HCS was first introduced in 1983, specifically to cover the chemical manufacturing industry. OSHA always envisaged that it would require periodic updates; these included a broadening of its scope to cover all industries where employees could be exposed to hazardous
chemicals and a major review for comprehensibility, undertaken in 1994. Since 2012, HCS has been aligned with GHS, then at its third revision, and it has subsequently been updated in line with amendments to GHS. Those amendments that appeared in the seventh revised edition of GHS, which this NPRM addresses, include revised criteria for the categorisation of flammable gases within Category 1; miscellaneous amendments intended to clarify the definitions of some health hazard classes; additional guidance regarding the coverage of section 14 of the SDS (which is non-mandatory under the HCS); and a new example in Annex 7 addressing labelling of small packages with fold-out labels. OSHA is also proposing to include some amendments included in the eighth revised edition of GHS. WORK TO BE DONE In total, the proposed changes are extremely extensive and will have a very significant impact on industry. The National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD) responded to the NPRM with a lengthy comment, highlighting the burden the HCS revision will have on its members. “Chemical distributors serve a critical role in the middle of the supply chain, and most of these companies have large numbers of suppliers, products, and customers,” said NACD president/CEO Eric R Byer. “Changing SDSs and labels for hundreds or even thousands of chemical products is a major undertaking for these companies.” To illustrate the extent of that undertaking, one NACD member has estimated that it would need to review 10,000 SDSs and update 4,000 of them. OSHA has calculated that each review should take 0.7 hours, which gives a figure of 16 months of dedicated work for this company. Further, NACD says, “some of the proposed changes are not necessary for harmonisation and would create excessive burdens for chemical manufacturers and distributors while adding needless complexity and liability to the system”. Moreover, those changes would not offer any comparable improvement in worker protection. In general, NACD feels that updating HCS in line with the biennial revision of GHS is not necessary and is unduly burdensome; most of
HCB MONTHLY | JULY/AUGUST 2021
