Chemical Management

December 1, 2018 is the final deadline for compliance with Health Canada’s GHS-aligned Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS 2015). By this date, all chemical manufacturers, importers, distributors and employers who handle hazardous products in Canada – or doing business with Canadian companies – covered by WHMIS 2015 must be in full compliance with the […]

OSHA just named its Top 10 Most Cited Violations in 2018 at the National Safety Council Congress and Expo. Among the top risks worker health and safety, Hazard Communication continues to top the agency’s list, as it has for over six years. For those involved in chemical management, Hazard Communication ranking of the list’s No. […]

The Fall 2018 meeting of the Society for Chemical Hazard Communication (SCHC) was held on September 22-26 in Washington DC, and VelocityEHS was on-hand for the morning of Tuesday September 25th as SCHC hosted several presentations covering the latest regulatory developments surrounding HazCom, WHMIS 2015, GHS and the recently amended Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). […]

EPA published a proposed rule in the Federal Register on October 1, 2018 that would revise the agency’s approach to regulating appliances containing substitute refrigerants, such as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). This rule, if finalized, will significantly impact obligations for owners of equipment containing these refrigerants. Could this proposed rule affect your business? Let’s take a closer […]

Somewhere on The University of Michigan campus, tucked in a windowless lab in the basement, Associate Professor Dr. Sanghyun Lee and his team of post-docs, PhD. Students, and MSc students have been busy changing the future of ergonomics. Dr. Lee has spearheaded a sensorless motion-capture technology that makes conducting a musculoskeletal risk assessments faster, easier, […]

Many EHS professionals still struggle to identify and correct risks in the workplace. In fact, as we’ve recently discussed in this blog, both the number and rate of occupational fatalities have been rising in recent years, which points to problems with risk assessment and control. One reason for this poor performance may be that risks […]

This week, the Unites States remembers the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. We’ve had 17 years now of grieving and lesson-learning, but the emotional scars will always remain. For many people who were near Ground Zero of the WTC attacks, especially first responders called to the scene and their loved ones, the pain of […]

OSHA recently indicated its intent to update the current HazCom 2012 Standard – which is aligned with GHS Revision 3 – to align it with the United Nation’s most recent edition, GHS Revision 7. The UN allows nations and agencies the flexibility to pick and choose which elements of the GHS to adopt. While specifics […]

This week marks the third anniversary of the deadly explosions in Tianjin, China. A total of 173 people, including at least 80 firefighters, were killed and nearly 800 others injured when two blasts ripped through a warehouse that was improperly storing hazardous chemicals. As a small fire erupted in the facility, first responders doused the […]

This month, OSHA formally issued a letter of interpretation (LOI) clarifying its requirements under the Hazard Communication (HazCom) Standard for manufacturers who wish to use ingredient concentration ranges to protect proprietary chemical information as trade secrets on their chemical safety data sheets (SDSs). The OSHA LOI was in direct response to questions originally submitted by […]