§11021 Material safety data sheets

Summary

Owners or operators of facilities that must have material safety data sheets under the Occupational Safety and Health Act must send each sheet, or a list of the chemicals, to the local emergency planning committee, the State emergency response commission, and the fire department that covers the facility. The list must show the chemical names, any hazardous components, and group chemicals by health or physical hazard (or by groups the Administrator sets). For mixtures, a facility can either list each hazardous ingredient (one listing per ingredient is enough even if it appears in many mixtures) or list the mixture itself. The Administrator may set minimum amounts of a chemical below which a facility does not have to follow these rules. If a facility only gave a list, the local emergency planning committee can ask the owner for any full safety sheet and must make sheets available to anyone who requests them. The initial safety sheets or list had to be provided before the later of 12 months after October 17, 1986, or 3 months after the facility was first required to prepare a sheet under OSHA. If an owner learns significant new information about a chemical, they must send an updated sheet within 3 months. “Hazardous chemical” means the term in 29 C.F.R. 1910.1200(c), but it does not include: FDA-regulated foods/additives/drugs/cosmetics; solids in manufactured items when no exposure occurs in normal use; products used for personal or household purposes or sold to the general public in the same form; substances used in research labs or medical facilities under direct supervision of a qualified person; or substances used in routine agriculture or fertilizers sold by a retailer to the final customer.