Chemical information systems

Conference · Sat Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1994

OSTI ID:78032

Zebora, M ^[1]

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1. AT and T Bell Labs., Murray Hill, NJ (United States). Environmental Health and Safety Center

The growing number of Federal and State regulations today from EPA to OSHA is putting a large burden on organizations to comply with regard to chemicals in the work place. The cornerstone of chemical information is the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS). The MSDS has been a requirement for chemical manufacturers for over fifteen years. Manufacturers of hazardous materials must provide MSDSs to purchasers. However, recent additional regulations from OSHA, in particular the Right To Know and the Hazard Communication Standard (Haz-Com) require that employers who use chemicals must be capable of providing an MSDS to every employee that requests one for a material that they work with. Paper filing systems to managing MSDSs are hard to maintain, costly, and inefficient. In multifacility organizations this can result in delays in distributions of those MSDSs to employees. At AT and T Bell Laboratories the Environmental Health and Safety Center has invested over a decade of development work into producing an integrated Chemical Inventory System/MSDS System. That system meets the requirements discussed in this paper and serves six major R and D laboratory facilities in three states. The system resides on a desktop personal computer. Operation of the system relies on teamwork between several diverse organizations which are involved in management of chemical safety at AT and T Bell Laboratories. The departments represented on that team are Industrial Hygiene and Safety, Environmental Management, Facilities Operations, Purchasing, Health Services, Research, and Environmental Data Management Services.

• OSTI ID: 78032
• Report Number(s): CONF-9406319--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY
HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY
POLLUTION REGULATIONS