“Make complex safety data sheets more manageable for the lab employee”

A safety data sheet (SDS) is a structured document that must contain information about the risks of a hazardous substance or preparation. The document provides instructions on how the substance can be used safely. This document is legally required for suppliers, but Ilja de Lange, data manager at Stoffenmanager, states that many SDSs are very complex are. During the LabSafety eventOn Tuesday, May 23, she will give tips on how to deal with this enormous mountain of information.

By: Dimitri Reijerman

Ilja has come into contact with VIBs on a regular basis during her career, she says: “Before my position at Stoffenmanager, I worked in a hospital laboratory. I was a hazardous substances manager there. At that time, I received many VIBs and made sure that good workplace instruction cards were available for the employees.”

In her current job, she handles the information sheets differently: “I currently receive VIBs from the customer, which I enter into the Stoffenmanager program. This way, they are offered all the information included in a VIB in a more structured way. This way, our customers can create workplace instruction cards and perform exposure assessments more quickly.”

Too complicated

In practice, the VIBs, which must comply with multiple European regulations, often prove to be too complicated, says Ilja: “I notice that some Safety, Health & Environment (SHE) employees do not know exactly what a safety data sheet is, what it should look like and what they can do with it. Even analysts sometimes have difficulty with this. Because there is so much information in a VIB that it is no longer clear where you can find the information you are looking for. That is also why the title of my lecture is 'something with trees and the forest'.”

“Suppose you need certain information about a hazardous substance quickly in an emergency situation, then I wish you the best of luck. Even I can't find it quickly. It's all there, but in practice it's often unclear. Another problem is that you sometimes don't get any or very outdated VIBs from suppliers. But they are obliged to provide up-to-date safety data sheets in the language of the country where they deliver their products. Unfortunately, this is hardly enforced, so it is important to point out to suppliers yourself that correctly supplied VIBs are available.”

Filter relevant information

An important tip from Ilja is to only filter the relevant information for lab employees from a VIB: “It already works much more pleasantly for employees if the information from a VIB is well summarized in a workplace instruction card”, says the data manager. “But someone has to create these cards. Depending on the size of a lab, some analysts have to do that themselves. And then it helps enormously if they know exactly where to look. I would like to provide handles for that during LabSafety. I also want to give the visitors of my lecture other tips with which they can see whether a VIB is correct, but also give them the feeling that they can get a grip on a safety data sheet.”

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