[IMAGE CREDIT: Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, via Flickr]Hazardous materials have not had a uniform system of storage, handling and use and sharing of information across countries, as all nations had their own standards. But the Globally Harmonized System developed by the United Nations and soon coming to Canada, is expected to create uniformity and efficiency.

While most of us are used to working in a single country or another over our entire professional career, we can all fall into some complacency in assuming that our workplace safety and health guidelines were the same in any country around the world. Up until a short time ago, that was not true. Believe it or not, different countries had different standards and guidelines for handling various hazardous substances.  And with many substances being produced by multi-national corporations,  that can lead ot a lot of expense for the companies to produce  information about the chemicals that fulfill  each country’s safety guidelines for handling and use.

More than a decade ago, the United Nations put forth a proposal to create a Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals, known by the acronym GHS. The idea was adopted by quite a few U.N. members over the last 10 years, but the U.S. and Canada have been among the last to make the system part of current law. The United States began implementation of GHS in August 2012, with Canada currently in the process of putting the system forth for public comment  sometime next year and having it implemented  no later than 2016 (we all know the speed in which bureaucracy tends to move).

As one might imagine, with more than 200 cvountries on this planet, and many chemicals  being in common use in virutually every counry, the U.M. has had a daunting process of trying to distill all the various guidelines and rules of proper chemical handling, storage and usage in all those countries into one single, comprehsive and coerent system that can be applied everywhere. Ther are certain benefits to having a unified system – first, it reduces the amount of regulatory  gymnastics that some companies would have to undergo to send their chemicals into any country that might have had different standards and guidelines than another country. Second, it helps all of us workplace health and safety pros around the world to be able to talk the same lagnuage with each other if we want to implement  a “model” program that might have been implemented in another country. We won’t have to interpret or translate  from the jargon in Kenya to have it be understood by health and safety pros in Canada or the U.K., for example. However, as one might guess, the system like this that tries to roll everything into a single entity, it might be a little convoluted at first glance. However, there is help to make sense of it, and you may find that it doesn’t take as long as one might think.

For those of you in the U.S. or Canada, you must be aware (if you are not already) that GHS will affect  symbols of which you are accustomed to using, as well as the Material Safety Data Sheets (MDSDs) and/or Information Sheets (MDISs) that we have been accustomed to using for years. You will likely  need to be re-trained, or re-educated, to understand the new standards and the new GHS system. Whether you are already working under the auspices of GHS in America or  on the path to doing so in Canada, the education process will be necessary to understand  what you need to know and how it is different from how you have always done things and how you were trained.

Fortunately, there is help for you, straight from us at Purcell Enterprises. We have some Train the Trainer courses about GHS and how it would work in Canada, and we also can provide some workbooks for workers who will likely be in position to handle, store, dispose or move these chemicals. If you are heavily involved in chemicals that would be under the GHS guidelines (as in, they are toxic, poisonous, corrosive, flammable or combustible), it would be wise to get up to speed on this global system and understand  your responsibilities in this new global community of sorts.

As GHS become law in Canada, those of us Canadian health and safety pros who handle chemicals will likely have some e-learning resources available to get details and information about GHS as it applies in Canada. Before then, however, you can either contact us here at Purcell Enterprises  about our GHS courses, or you can check out the Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety in Hamilton. There are some free courses available that only take about 30 minutes each to complete and can give you basic information about GHS. If you are a company that basically relies on your entire workforce to engage in safety – rather than having a single safety “policeman” on your payroll – then it might be a good idea to check into more detailed information through Purcell Enterprises’ Train the Trainer courses about GHS, which can then trickle down to providing knowledge for the entire workplace so that when GHS becomes law (which is will, for all intents and purposes), all of your health and safety engineers will be properly prepared, informed and will need no transitional period to adjust to the changes.