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Globally Harmonized System (GHS)
With a goal to reduce global health and safety risks, the world’s industrialized nations began working on ways to standardize hazardous substance regulation during the early 1990s.
Today, the United Nations' Globally Harmonized System (GHS) is used to help classify and label chemicals throughout the world. Manufacturers, employers and suppliers use the system to communicate the dangers and physical properties of their hazardous substances in a globally consistent manner.
Since its inception, the GHS has become the recognized international system for standardizing communication of hazardous substances and classifying chemicals by the health, environmental and physical hazards they present. Hazard classification and hazard communication are the GHS’ primary areas of concern.
Classification
Hazard Classification for
GHS is comprised of four sub-elements:
- Health hazards
- Environmental hazards
- Physical hazards
- Mixtures
Hazard Communication
Like WHMIS in Canada and OSHA/ANSI in the United States, the GHS routinely proposes hazard communication materials, including labels and safety data sheets.* GHS labels are similar to, but not exactly the same as WHMIS and OSHA/ANSI labels. The major difference is GHS uses special health and environmental warning symbols.
*What are commonly referred to as material safety data sheets (MSDS) by OSHA and WHMIS are referred to as safety data sheets (SDS) by the GHS.
The aim of GHS is to ensure chemical toxicity and physical hazard information is readily available, thereby giving people a better chance of staying safe during the use, handling and transport of hazardous chemicals.
The GHS is actively working toward:
- enhancing the protection of human health and the environment by providing an internationally comprehensible system for hazard communication
- providing a recognized framework for countries without an existing system
- reducing the need for testing and evaluating chemicals
- facilitating international trade in chemicals whose hazards have been
properly assessed and identified
It should be noted that GHS focuses on classification and communication of
hazards, not risk management. It doesn’t recommend substance
exposure limits or suggest how workers should be trained. Adoption of these and
other risk management details is left to each country.
While Canada and the United States can comfortably integrate GHS into their
current regulatory schemes, countries without comprehensive programs can
build a regulatory system around GHS elements. They must ensure, however,
consistent application of GHS elements. For example, if a
national system covers the carcinogenicity of a chemical, it should follow the
GHS classification scheme to classify elements on the chemical’s label. Allowing
for inconsistencies from nation to nation would undermine the GHS goal of
international harmonization.
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