Earlier this year, OSHA updated its hazard communication standard to align with Revision 7—and, in a few cases, Revision 8—of the Globally Harmonized System for Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS). The updates are the most significant changes to the standard since 2012. The agency then followed these updates with minor revisions released in October.

To put these changes into perspective, The Synergist spoke with Denese Deeds, CIH, SDSRP, FAIHA, and Chandra Deeds Gioiello, MS, CIH, SDSRP, whose family-run consultancy specializes in hazard communication and the authoring of safety data sheets and chemical labels. Deeds and Gioiello are frequent presenters on hazard communication at AIHA conferences, active in the Society for Chemical Hazard Communication (SCHC), and nonvoting delegates to the United Nations Subcommittee of Experts on the GHS. The article on these pages reflects their discussions with Synergist staff about the standard. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

THE SYNERGIST: ARE THERE ASPECTS OF THE NEW STANDARD THAT INDUSTRY IS PARTICULARLY CONCERNED ABOUT? Chandra Gioiello: One of the things that people are worried about is that, if you know the product will go through some sort of change that will generate new hazards in its intended use, you need to classify and warn for those hazards. From my understanding, it goes back to the way that OSHA has always treated combustible dusts. You had to classify a product as a combustible dust if it’s sold as a powder, or if you know that it’s going to be processed in a way that will produce a combustible dust.

In the years since then, there have been companies that sold products that were solids that generated combustible dusts, did not warn about it, and there was an explosion. And there had to be lawsuits to get these companies to classify their products as combustible dusts, even though they knew from the fact that there was an explosion that they absolutely were. I think this change is just a way for OSHA to make it easier to enforce when companies do know that their products create these hazards.

Denese Deeds: We had a lot of discussion at the SCHC meeting about the idea that if a chemical is produced for a particular use, and in that use it reacts or decomposes, we have to consider that in the hazard assessment and communicate that information—so, reactions that occur in the normal use or the foreseeable misuse of your product. Industry was pretty upset about that, because they were like, “We don’t always know how our products are being used, and somebody could use it in a way we don’t really anticipate.” But we don’t really see that as that big a deal, because if we don’t know about a use, why would we be expected to communicate that?

On the other hand, in those circumstances where you are selling a product and the purpose of it is to mix two parts together, and in that reaction formaldehyde or some other hazardous chemical is released, and you know that that is going to happen, then yeah, we always felt that you should communicate that information. As OEHS professionals, we want that information. If the products we’re purchasing are being used in the correct way and they’re going to release hazardous decomposition or reaction products, then it’s important for us to know that so we can evaluate those potential exposures and put in controls to protect our workers. So, to me, it’s a responsibility of the producer of those chemicals to communicate, and always has been.

DD: At SCHC meetings, I would hear from OSHA a lot of concern that safety data sheets allowed hazardous ingredients to have ridiculous concentration ranges to protect a trade secret. You could literally say that a product has one to 80 percent of some hazardous component. From an OEHS professional’s perspective, if the actual amount is only one or two percent in your mixture you might not feel you need to sample, but if it’s 80 percent you might feel you really need to evaluate that exposure. And it being such a wide range meant that it is difficult for people to put the hazard into perspective and to decide whether you need to implement controls.

And so they’ve said, “Okay, we’ll still allow you to use ranges, but we’re going to limit those ranges.” And they’ve done that through adopting the Canadian prescribed concentration limits. [Editor’s note: these limits appear in Canada’s Hazardous Products Regulation.] So, to be a trade secret, you must use a prescribed range. At the lower concentrations where the ranges are small, 30 percent and below, if your actual range doesn’t fit in any one of the specific ranges, you can combine a couple of adjacent ranges to make a larger range to cover that. A lot of companies that were doing North American safety data sheets were using the Canadian ranges already, but for many companies that weren’t, they’ll be forced to do that.

DD: Well, there were some typos in the standard. When it was published in the Federal Register, they mistakenly changed the concentration limit for reproductive toxicity for mixtures from a tenth of a percent to a hundredth of a percent, and right away people started going, “But that’s not what’s in the GHS!” There were a few of those kinds of things. But there was one thing that I think is really substantial, for products that are released for shipment.

CG: A lot of companies package a lot of product all at once, and they label it, and then they stick it in a warehouse, and it’s in that warehouse until someone orders it. It could be hours, it could be years.

DD: In the meantime, they might find out that some chemical that’s in their product has a new hazard, so they have to update the safety data sheet and the label. But now these products are out there in a warehouse. They could go get them and bring them back and open all the boxes and relabel all of them and put them back out, but OSHA recognizes that there are hazards associated with that, and a lot of waste. So the proposed standard said that if the product is actually released for shipment, companies will not have to relabel, but they will have to send the new labels with the product. Industry commented very negatively about that because they were concerned that their customers would get a box of chemical products with a pouch on the outside that has a dozen loose labels. Is anybody going to put those on those cans? Probably not. And so you have all these loose labels lying around, and maybe some worker is filling a portable container with a chemical, they have to put a label on it, and they grab that label and just stick it on even though the chemical isn’t what the label says it is. Industry was very concerned with liability regarding that.

When the updated standard was published, it said that companies could relabel the product or send the new labels with the package or electronically, or by some other means. But then in this correction, OSHA said, “Oh, we didn’t mean to put that in at all.” So now you must send the actual, physical labels with the shipment. We’ll have to wait and see how this ends up being received by industry.

CG: I understand why OSHA thinks this is a good idea. But I also understand industry’s perspective. I don’t know how that’s going to work. If you have distributors, do you have to send the distributors an updated label to send with the product? There are a lot of logistical issues.

TS: WHAT DOES THE UPDATED STANDARD SAY ABOUT LABELLING FOR SMALL PACKAGING?

CG: This is one thing that I think industry will be very happy about. A number of my clients make reagents and test kits that are tiny vials that go into a machine. OSHA would talk about putting a fold-out label on it, but if you have a really tiny vial that’s going into a machine, fold-out labels are almost physically impossible.

The updated standard really decreases the amount of stuff that’s required on these small product labels. Containers that are less than 100 milligrams need a pictogram, a signal word, and then the statement, “The full label information for the hazardous chemical is provided on the immediate outer package.” No hazard statements, no precautionary statements. For really small containers—3 milliliters or less—you only have to have a way to identify the product and then the full labeling on the immediate outer package with the statement, “The small container(s) inside this box must be stored in the immediate outer package bearing the complete label when not in use.” The vials don’t have to have a label if it will interfere with the product use. My clients who make those types of products are very happy with the change. I think it’s a good middle ground. By requiring that labeling on the immediate outer package, you’re ensuring that that information gets to the people who are using it, while at the same time making it more feasible for the companies that are doing the labeling.

DD: After 2012, when the hazcom standard was first aligned with the GHS, OSHA issued their compliance guide with a practical accommodation for labeling small containers if you could not fit all the information on the label. That was in guidance, but it wasn’t in the regulation. What OSHA has done in the updated standard is take that practical accommodation and turn it into regulatory text. I think that was a very good thing to do because a lot of companies did not know about or didn’t read the guidance, or they may not have felt that, because it was guidance, they could rely on it.

OSHA is trying to make sure that the full labeling is always available and requires that the full labeling for the chemical must be on the outer packaging. In some circumstances where you don’t have an outer package, the solution may be a pull-out label. I have clients who want Spanish on the label because we have so many Spanish-speaking people in our country and in workplaces, and I think that’s very laudable. If you are trying to put all this information into two languages and make it legible, pull-out labels may be the answer. There will still be some challenges for industry, but if they follow the regulatory requirements, they know that their product is compliant.

CG: We now have three classifications for aerosols: extremely flammable, flammable, and nonflammable. Gases under pressure are separate, so aerosols don’t require the gas-under-pressure pictogram. And we have chemicals under pressure, which is a new hazard class from GHS Revision 8. That was one of the things that industry was specifically asking for with the update.

DD: Chemicals under pressure is something that was introduced into the transport regulations a number of years ago. These products are like aerosols except they’re not in small containers. Some of them are single use, but a lot of them are refillable containers. They are used a lot in construction. Prior to this update, we classified these products as liquids or solids, and added all of the elements for compressed gas. But now at least the physical hazard part of it is included in a single hazard class with three categories based on flammability.

DD: Well, somewhat. The GHS is updated every two years, and a lot of work goes on through the biennium to make these updates. It’s really not possible, at least with our regulatory process, for OSHA to keep up. The good news for OEHS professionals is that the basic criteria of the GHS have not changed. The work of the GHS has been in refinement and in adding hazards that weren’t originally addressed.

Chemical companies are constantly revising their products and their formulas. There’s so much work, and there are only so many people preparing these documents, so it’s difficult for industry to find time to go back and review the existing classifications. I think that this update is going to require everybody to go through that process again, and they will probably identify some changes that have occurred since 2012 that they just missed. I think you’re going to see some changes as a result, but it won’t be because the GHS itself changed.

One of the complaints we have about the GHS is the lack of uniform application. The developers of the GHS couldn’t agree on every classification issue, and so we have some options for how mixtures are handled. Countries can select between two concentration limits for certain hazards, for example, reproductive toxicity and STOTs, specific target organ toxins. Europe took the high cutoffs, and the U.S. took the low cutoffs. This means the same product can be classified differently in the EU and the U.S. That difference hasn’t changed. OSHA didn’t change their approach or what concentration limits are used for classification. That means the unfortunate difference that exists in the classification of mixtures between the U.S. and China and the U.S. and Europe will continue. We as OEHS professionals have to be aware of those differences so that we pay attention to the safety data sheets we get for products that come from Europe. We must consider that maybe this hasn’t been classified properly under U.S. regulations and I might not be informing my workers about a hazardous sensitization or a reproductive toxicity or a specific target organ toxicity hazard because that country doesn’t require classification at that concentration but the U.S. does.

CG: We’ve been seeing countries update to the GHS on about a 10-year cycle. Right now, I think that Revision 7/8 is the most recent that anyone has updated to. Revision 10 is out, and Revision 11 will be out next year, though from my understanding, it doesn’t look like there are any major new hazard classes. Revision 9 is where you start to see big changes in precautionary phrases. I think some of the changes that they’re working on are really good, better information about first aid for corrosives and eye damage and things like that.

Europe is really pushing to have endocrine disruptors as a new hazard class, as both a health hazard and an environmental hazard. The U.S., Canada, the U.K., and China are pushing back on that, mostly because the science isn’t there. I don’t think any of the governmental bodies are saying that it’s not something to worry about so much as we don’t really understand endocrine disruptors well enough to be able to classify for it. We don’t understand the mechanism, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development doesn’t have a test method. For an actual hazard classification under the GHS, there has to be a test methodology.

I think that’s one of the reasons why you see a lot more new physical hazards, like the change for aerosols, because it’s fairly straightforward to have a test method. Combustible dusts are in an annex, they have not been adopted internationally as a hazard class, and from my understanding, one of the reasons is because there isn’t a clear test methodology to identify that something is a combustible dust.

If endocrine disruptors become an environmental hazard, OSHA doesn’t have authority to adopt environmental classifications because that’s under EPA. It’s a jurisdiction thing that confuses the Europeans. But if it’s a health hazard, it will be interesting to see what OSHA decides to do.

CG: Now’s a good time to check your ingredient classifications. You’re going to have to update your safety data sheets anyway, so you should check your formulations, make sure they’re still correct, that the safety data sheet aligns with what you’re actually selling. If you have a mechanism to flag for your downstream users whether it’s just a format change for the updated standard or if there’s actually an updated classification, that is incredibly helpful, because as part of the updated standard companies will have to train their employees on new hazards. Flagging those new hazards for your downstream users, or going to your suppliers and asking them if there have been classification changes, will make it so that instead of having to compare hundreds of documents, you’ll be able to just flag the ones that you need to check and train on.

I’d also remind readers that the hazcom standard is routinely in the top five cited OSHA regulations. But the citations aren’t about classification. They’re about having a written hazcom program, having your containers labeled, and access to safety data sheets. So instead of worrying about a lot of these things, people just need to make sure their written hazcom program is up to date and that their employees can access safety data sheets during the workday.

DD: OSHA’s always provided really strong leadership at the GHS. They work very hard to represent all of us, the industry people from the United States but also our OEHS professionals as well. I think we should all be very proud of the leadership that OSHA has given to the GHS. Imagine all the people working in less sophisticated workplaces around the world where these workers now will have recognizable hazard communication. We often complain about OSHA, but we don’t think about the good stuff that they do that really is there to protect not just U.S. workers but workers around the world.

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