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GHS Facts

12 GHS Facts

  1. GHS stands for the Globally Harmonized System of the Classification and Labelling of Chemicals. 
  2. It is a set of guidelines for ensuring the safe production, transport, handling, use and disposal of hazardous materials. 
  3. The GHS was developed by the United Nations (UN) as a way to align the chemical regulations and standards of different agencies in different countries. In short, it is an international effort to get everyone on the same page in terms of chemical hazard communication. The goal is that every country will incorporate the principles of the GHS into their own chemical management standards to facilitate easier international sale and transportation of hazardous chemicals and make workplaces safer for all employees exposed to chemical hazards.
  4. A UN subcommittee reviews and updates the GHS every two years. The most recent edition is Revision 10, published in 2023. This means we can expect that the next edition (Revision 11) will likely come out in 2025. But remember, the publication of a new edition of the GHS alone does not change regulatory requirements, unless a specific agency issues a rulemaking aligning their regulations with a specific edition or editions of the GHS.
  5. US OSHA officially aligned the HazCom Standard with GHS Revision 3 on March 26, 2012 via a final rule with a phased-in transition timeline that ended in 2016, with extensions into 2017 for end-users affected by upstream delays. OSHA calls this revision, HazCom 2012. On May 20, 2024, OSHA published another final rule aligning the HazCom Standard with GHS Revision 7 (and select elements of Revision 8). Manufacturers, importers or suppliers of substances affected by the final rule have 18 months from its effective date of July 19, 2024 to comply, while manufacturers, suppliers or importers of mixtures have 3 years to comply.
  6. The GHS itself is not a law or regulation that can be enforced. Think of it as a set of recommendations or collection of best practices. No country or regulatory agency is obligated to adopt all or even any part of the GHS. Those who choose to do so can use an edition or editions of the GHS as a “framework regulation” to develop or revise their own hazardous chemical regulations.
  7. Governments and individual regulatory agencies can pick and choose those pieces of specific editions of the GHS (often referred to as “the purple book”) they wish to incorporate into their own regulations (this is called the “building block” approach). Each adopting country is solely responsible for its enforcement within its jurisdiction. 
  8. To date, over 83 countries have adopted GHS or are in the process of adopting GHS. 
  9. The most noticeable changes brought by GHS for most organizations are changes to hazardous chemical container labels, safety data sheet (SDS) information, and chemical hazard classifications.
  10. As an example, the GHS refers to safety data sheets as SDSs, dropping the M from the old name of “material safety data sheets” (or MSDSs) most American companies had been used to. The GHS also standardizes the content and formatting of SDSs into 16 sections with a strict ordering. Labels also look quite different, with 6 standardized elements that include specific language depending upon chemical classification. 
  11. The GHS has also helped to harmonize hazard pictograms, the images manufacturers use on shipped container labels to represent the hazards of their chemicals. Prior to GHS and its adoption by global regulatory agencies, manufacturers, distributors and importers had wide latitude in choosing pictograms, which resulted in confusion for end users that compromised their safety. Under the GHS, there are only 9 allowable pictograms, with the specific pictogram used depending on the hazard classification.
  12. GHS is meant to be a logical and comprehensive approach to: 
  • Defining health, physical and environmental hazards of chemicals (although environmental hazards are outside OSHA’s jurisdiction) 
  • Creating classification processes that use available data on chemicals for comparison with the defined hazard criteria 
  • Communicating hazard information in a prescribed and uniform way on labels and SDSs 
GHS Resource Center