MSDS/SDS

Safety Data Sheets

Unfortunately, it is indeed a fact that sooner or later life will kill you. Every day we routinely face risks, including many dangers on the job site. Some risks are obvious, falling objects, falls from heights, injury from moving scenery & crates. Care and safe working habits can help with these.

However, we also face less obvious health dangers at work from chemicals and materials. Paints contain toxic pigments. Chemicals may blister skin or soak through to the bloodstream. Solvents can poison organs and the nervous system. Sprays have toxic gases. Dusts and fumes may be both toxic and carcinogenic.

The Federal government has actually done something to help protect workers, and that is OSHA.

OSHA requires that the employer provide workers with information on health hazards, AND provide the means to stay healthy. When it comes to chemicals, the information we need is provided, originally through Material Safety Data Sheets, or MSDS, and currently through SDS or Safety Data Sheets, so we can know what to do to protect ourselves. SDS tell us the recognized harzards of the chemicals we work with, the required procedures and Personal Protective Equipment, or PPEs (eye protection, masks, gloves, spray booths for spray paint, dyes and chemicals), which are supposed to be provided by our employers for our protection.

Hazards

To know what precautions to take, you must know what you're up against. Chemical health hazards break down into categories:
Acute, chronic, Sensitization and Carcinogenic.

• Acute effects: occur quickly upon exposure, and are felt within short time. Effects vary according to level of exposure, and may be minor all the way to fatal.
• Chronic Effects: are those which build up slowly over time. You don't notice a problem until it has built up over time, and by the time you do notice, its too late. Furthermore, because they take awhile to manifest, chronic effects are harder to diagnose. You get sick, but don't know exactly why.
• Sensitization: cause an allergic reaction. May cause dermatitis (skin reaction) or more seriously, respiratory effects.
• Carcinogens: are wildly unpredictable, and no safe levels of exposure of a carcinogenic chemical CAN be set. A lifetime's exposure may do nothing, or a single exposure may cause cancer. There is no way to predict.

Let us consider a common and familiar chemical to which many of us have been exposed: Grain Alcohol. This product is of course the "active ingredient" in alcoholic beverages, but it is also a common industrial solvent. Let us look at it as a chemical:

Acute effects of grain alcohol:
Low levels of exposure may not be felt at all, but even low levels will usually cause a slight narcosis. You feel a little tipsy. Higher levels of exposure can cause more severe effects, headache, nausea, loss of coordination, and finally unconsciousness and even death.

All this from a fairly benign solvent. Other solvents, even closely related ones like wood alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, and glycol, will cause similar but FAR MORE toxic effects for a given amount. Many, including grain alcohol, can be absorbed right through the skin. They may target different organs. All attack the brain, liver and kidneys, but wood alcohol quickly targets and destroys the optic nerve, making you go blind, and glycol destroy the liver almost immediately, and a small amount can be deadly.

So, sometimes acute effects go away, sometimes they cause long term damage, and sometimes they can kill.

Chronic effect of grain alcohol: Long term exposure includes cirosos or hardening of the liver, and brain damage causing dementia.

A single binge with alcohol may make you sick for a night, but leave no permanent damage.
Chronic drinking can cause organ damage and will eventually kill you.

Sensitizing agents: will cause various allergic reactions which may be quite individual; may take the form of dermatitis (skin rashes, hives, and blisters), respiratory reactions (similar to hay fever), and even anaphalactic shock, a severe reaction which can close off the airways, and even cause death. Sensitizing agents can exhibit chronic effects; they may not show up until there have been several exposures, and then will show increasingly severe reactions on subsequent exposures. Also, once you have been sensitized to one chemical, you will likely become more easily sensitized to others as well, and you MAY ultimately become sensitive to almost everything!

Carcinogens are a special class because they cause cancer cells to develop, which are a mutation of normal cells. There is NO SAFE LEVEL of exposure to carcinogens. One molecule in just the right place and time can cause a cancer. Generally speaking, the greater the exposure the more likely that cancer will develop. But there is no way to tell either way.

A single dose of a carcinogen may kill, or a lifetime exposure may do nothing.

Routes of Entry

There are many ways chemicals can get into you. Some chemicals may be absorbed through the skin and the eyes. Many that produce fumes and vapors may be breathed in and enter the bloodstream through the lungs. They may also be ingested, swallowed and absorbed through the digestive system. This will not only occur if you eat the product, but fumes, dusts and vapors can also fall onto or be absorbed by food and beverages in or near the work area, and the subsequently be eaten or drunk. This is why it is not a good idea to store or consume food and beverages in or near the immediate work area.

How do you protect yourself? Check the SDS.

SDS are a form OSHA requires manufacturers to fill out. Like many government forms, it requires a lot of information which may or may not be useful, and does take practice to read. But once you learn how, they do make sense.

SDS

Features:

• Provides necessary info to handle safely
  
• Must be supplied upon request
  
• Standardized Format
  
• Divided into sections

Uses specific terms and definitions defined by OSHA

Information is presented in a specific order and format.
However, there are actually two formats, OSHA and ANSI. The OSHA form is the original government form. Can be a little intimidating and hard to find what you need to know. ANSI is a newer form designed by the American National Standards Institute. It is accepted by OSHA as well and is much more user friendly.

OSHA and ANSI Sections

The MSDS forms are divided into sections to make organize the information. The two forms do not match, but all the information is there if you look in the right section.

Product and Manufacturer (osha 1; ansi 1)

Name of the Product, Trade name, chemical family
Manufacturer's address and phone numbers

Ingredients (osha 2; ansi 2)

Hazardous ingredients, esp. those for which standards have been set. May include exposure level guidelines.

“Proprietary” listings: beware
By using this the manufacturer doesn't HAVE to tell you what is in the product. It is meant to protect trade secrets from the competition, but leaves workers uninformed about how to protect themselves.

Exposure Limits

Exposure limits are how much exposure an average healthy adult (male) can be expected to be exposed to without showing adverse effects. They are NOT "safe" levels. There are no "safe" levels, only tolerable levels, which means they probably won't make you very sick!

Permitted exposure levels ASSUME you are "average", healthy, are not a small person, haven't been exposed to too many other chemicals, not pregnant or likely to be anytime soon, don't have a compromised immune system, etc. In other words, "permitted" levels may still be too much for YOU!

Permitted exposure levels are expressed in several ways:

Characteristics (osha 3; ansi 9)

• Appearance
• Boiling, melting, freezing points
• Vapor pressure: how dense the vapors get above the liquid in a closed container
• Vapor density: how much the vapor weighs compared to the same amount of air
• Specific Gravity: how heavy compared to water, or sometimes to air
• Evaporation rate: how fast it evaporates (compared to reference chemical, e.g. water or ether)

Physical Hazards (osha 4, 5; ansi 5, 10)

• Flammability
  • Flash point: lowest temperature where enough vapor will emitted to allow ignition if ignition source is present
  • Flammability and Explosive limits: what is too lean or too rich to burn. Everything in between burns!
  • Fire control information, how to safely put a fire out if it occurs.
• Reactivity
  • Stability: how easily it breaks down
  • Decomposition products: what it breaks down into
  • Hazardous polymerization: large molecules from small ones (plastic, etc.)
  • Conditions to avoid

Health Hazards (osha 6; ansi 3, 4, 11)

• How it gets in the body
• What it does there
• First Aid and treatment

Safe Handling and disposal (osha 7,8; ansi 6, 7, 8, 12)

• How to avoid dangerous problems
• How to treat a spill or leak
• How to safely dispose of product
• How to protect yourself from exposure
  • Required safety equipment
  • Masks, gloves, clothing required
  • Type of respirators that may be required
• Required cleanup procedures after work

WARNING: “Normal” Conditions ONLY!
The recommendations for exposures and protection is based on "normal working conditions". That means 8 hrs/ day, 5 days/ week, with a two-day weekend to detoxify. In theatre, we NEVER have normal working conditions! We rarely work a normal "40 hour week", instead we sometimes work more than 8 hours in a day and more that 40 hours in a week or more than 5 days in a row. We may also work a shorter work period with the chemicals in question. The information can be taken as a guide for how bad the stuff might be for us, but will not exactly apply to our situations.

Additional info, precautions (osha 9; ansi 13, 14, 15, 16)

• Transportation
• Disposal
• Regulatory info
• Label information

A more direct comparison between the two forms: