Safety data sheets: upload, confirm and keep current

A safety data sheet only counts once a person has checked it. A new SDS (yours, or one the supplier uploads) waits as SDS to confirm; when you confirm it, it becomes the current SDS and the one before is kept as superseded. Every version stays on record and can be opened.

Before you start

You need to look after the chemical: an administrator or, for builders and other businesses, a safety officer, or a project or site manager for chemicals kept on their sites.

How to upload a newer SDS

1. 1Step 1: Open the chemical from the register.
2. 2Step 2: Under Safety data sheet, choose the file in Upload a newer SDS and select Upload.
3. 3Step 3: It appears as Waiting for you. Confirm it (below) when you've checked it.

How to confirm an SDS

1. 1Step 1: Under Waiting for you, select Open to read the file. Check it's this product and the latest version.
2. 2Step 2: If your organisation has switched on suggestions, select Suggest details from this SDS (or look at the suggestions already there). Tick only the ones that match the SDS: use Software's suggestions: tick the ones to use to see them.
3. 3Step 3: Enter Date on the SDS (its issue, revision or review date). Leave Review by (optional) empty to use 5 years after that date.
4. 4Step 4: Select Confirm: make it the current SDS.
5. 5Step 5: Not right? Open Not right? Reject it, say why, and select Reject.

Suggestions read from the SDS

When an administrator has said yes in Chemicals settings, software reads an uploaded SDS and suggests the product, supplier, date, dangerous goods class, GHS classification, hazard statements, signal word, pictograms, PPE and a short first aid, spill and fire summary. Each suggestion shows how sure it was. Nothing is used until you tick it and confirm, and the software never confirms an SDS: the chemical's page records which details came from software's read and who checked them.

What happens next

• The review date is 5 years after the SDS's date unless you entered another (manufacturers and importers must review an SDS at least every 5 years: model WHS Regulations r 330(3); Victoria: OHS Regulations r 146).
• The person who looks after the chemical (Who looks after it (gets the SDS reminders)), or else the people who look after safety where it's kept, or else the administrators, is emailed 60, 30, 14 and 7 days before the review date, and on the day.
• The register shows SDS review due soon within 60 days and SDS past its 5-year review after it.

Common questions

• Is an SDS past its review date wrong? Not automatically: your duty is to hold the current one. Ask the supplier whether there's a newer one: see Ask the supplier for the current SDS.
• Can I delete an old version? No. Every version is kept so you can show what was current at any time.
• Why can't I enter a date in the future? The date is the one printed on the SDS, so it can't be later than today, or earlier than the current SDS's date.
• Suggestions didn't appear. Reading needs the setting on and your organisation's read assist on (Settings → Read assist). A file over 8 MB or 20 pages isn't read, and reading stops for the day after 100 reads. Fill in the details yourself.

Limits

• An SDS can be a PDF, PNG or JPG up to 10 MB. Every upload is virus-checked.
• Software reads PDFs up to 20 pages and 8 MB, 100 a day for your organisation; the same file is read only once.