Poison center hotline as a supplement to safety sheets

June 4, 1990

Dr. Leo Sioris, Director
Minnesota Regional Poison Center
[Recipient address omitted]
Dear Dr. Sioris:

Thank you for your letter of March 28 and for the opportunity I had to meet with you on that same date to discuss the Minnesota Regional Poison Center's 24 hour Right to Know/Hazard Communication (RTK/HC) telephone hotline. We apologize for the delay in this response.

The purpose of your letter was to clarify the intent of your program as regards the use, availability and support of on-site MSDS information. You also asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to provide you with a written response as to whether or not your program approach conflicts with existing OSHA rules and regulations regarding use and access to MSDS information for both stationary and mobile workforces. This letter is a response to that request.

Your letter states that your service will provide telephone MSDS information as well as computer generated or FAX transmission "information". You indicate that this information will supplement and update if necessary the onsite MSDS information. If your service will be used by employers to provide MSDS information to employees, you must be capable of providing all of the required MSDS information. Verbal information that is provided to mobile workforces by telephone must also meet this requirement. Computer generation or FAX transmission of information would be acceptable if a hardcopy can be produced in the workplace that contains all of the MSDS information required by the standard. At a fixed worksite this hardcopy MSDS information must be readily accessible during each workshift to employees when they are in their work areas.

In your letter, you differentiate between how MSDS will be maintained on site for stationary and mobile workforces, however, you do not specify the source of these MSDS. You state that "onsite copies of MSDS" will be "available and accessible within each workshift" for stationary workplaces while for mobile workforces, "hardcopy MSDS information" will be maintained at the primary or central work location. We would like to clarify the requirements for onsite MSDS sheets. Paragraph (g)(9) of the Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) requires that the material safety data sheet, not just "MSDS information" be kept at the work location. This requirement includes mobile workforces where the standard permits the MSDS to be kept at the primary workplace as long as all of the required information contained on the MSDS can be immediately obtained by employees in an emergency.

The standard allows the MSDS to, as you indicate per paragraph (g)(10) , "be kept in any form, including operating procedures," however, this provision applies to alternatives to MSDS located within a plant site (see Federal Register, vol. 48, No. 228, pg. 53337). This alternative approach was intended to allow employers to address the hazards of a process, rather than individual chemicals, again, within or while on a plant site. Substitutes for MSDS must provide all of the required information from the original MSDS in hardcopy format.

The MSDS must be specific to each chemical manufacturer's product and, each MSDS must contain the specific chemical identity as used on the required label on the chemical. Further, each chemical manufacturer or importer must list on the chemical's MSDS their name, address and telephone number or the same information for a responsible party" who will provide additional information on the hazardous chemical and appropriate emergency procedures (see (g)(2)(xii)). Thus, the MSDS information must provide the specific telephone number or other emergency contact information of the chemical manufacturer for the specific chemical that they are working with, as required at (g)(2)(xii) of the standard.

As you are aware, it is the responsibility of the chemical manufacturer or importer to evaluate and compile all the hazard information known about the chemicals he produces. It is also his responsibility to transmit and update that information on MSDS sent to downstream users. Any party who changes a chemical's MSDS or label then becomes the responsible party for the change. Responsible parties must be able to supply all the information required by the MSDS, including appropriate emergency information as discussed above.

It has been estimated that there are about 650,000 hazardous chemical products utilized in American workplaces, and hundreds more are introduced into the workplace annually. Chemical manufacturers and importers are the ones who perform the hazard evaluations on the chemicals; they generate or keep the data; and they are the ones who know about their products. Therefore they are in the best position to provide and keep up-to-date the hazard information data required under the HCS. MSDS for "identical" chemicals produced by different chemical manufacturers may contain different information, depending upon when the MSDS was most recently updated with new information, when it was sent to and received by the using or downstream or reported contaminants which may affect the hazardous properties of the specific chemical.

Therefore, if the supplemental information provided by the RTK/HC hotline is the information from or reported on each chemical manufacturer's or importer's specific MSDS, then the hotline service would serve to increase the effectiveness of the employee's overall hazard communication program. But, again, the information provided must be from the chemical's own MSDS, not a compilation of data from secondary sources, which may not be representative of the manufacturer's hazard determination to that specific chemical.

We hope this discussion has been helpful to you in understanding the requirements of the Agency regarding the information provisions of the HCS. Please feel free to contact us again if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,
Gerard F. Scannell
Assistant Secretary

[March 28 requester letter and separate July 7 OSHA reply reproduced on OSHA page; omitted here.]