4) Summary information about dangers, safety rules, behavior in case of danger, and waste disposal for the whole task. 3) Text of essential and important H/P phrases. 2) List of substances needed for this task with compiled safety data.

1) Head section with general information about the institute, user, and the task to be performed. Overview of an examplary group safety data sheet for the synthesis of Aspirin. This makes GSDSs not only very useful for students attending laboratory courses but also for day-to-day tasks, routines, and experiments in research laboratories. Secondly, their effort results in a clear overview of these dangers, which are always at hand during the experiment since it contains only two pages (equal one sheet of paper). There are two main benefits of this system: First, students are forced to deal with the dangers of chemicals. An examplary GSDS with its different sections is displayed in Figure Figure1. It has to be signed by the student and the assistant/supervisor to confirm that the student is fully aware of the dangers before starting the experiment itself. A GSDS contains only the most important safety information for all chemicals required for one experiment on just two pages. German students have to fill out so-called ‘group safety data sheets’ (GSDSs) for experiments (syntheses) they do in laboratory courses. Based on our own experience these are the reasons why the task of briefing oneself about dangers is neglected, not only by freshmen but by experienced researchers. Additionally, particular dangers such as teratogenicity may be overlooked. Due to this it is laborious and time consuming to find and compile safety information such as disposal or first-aid. For common tasks such as syntheses more than one chemical usually is required and these chemicals frequently are purchased from different sources. So, every vendor uses his own layout since there is no standard template. This is amplified by the fact that in contrast to the content the layout of a MSDS is not clearly specified. The amount and presentation of data sometimes makes a MSDS very confusing. In Europe MSDSs are part of the regulations (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH) and (EC) No 453/2010, and there are similar regulations in other countries.Ī MSDS contains multiple pages with no less than sixteen sections of data about one chemical. Since each chemical possesses its very own properties and dangers, a vendor has to provide material safety data sheets (MSDSs) to inform users and purchasers about these properties and dangers. Most of them are dangerous if not handled with great care, though. Some of them are harmless and do not cause any problem. Nowadays, many types of chemicals and mixtures are used in laboratories.

Safety data sheet creator