Many EHS professionals are responsible for managing chemical safety at companies with large chemical inventories. It’s already challenging enough to keep inventory records and the safety data sheet (SDS) library up to date, but these challenges are compounded when you think about the need to understand the ingredients in your chemical products. Understanding your inventory at the ingredient level is necessary to make sure you’re compliant with applicable EHS regulations.
For example, PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), or "forever chemicals," are under increasing global scrutiny due to their harmful environmental and health impacts. The U.S. EPA continues to add more PFAS chemicals to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) list as the science and research becomes available, triggering reporting requirements for even small amounts. This means now, more than ever, you need to know if you have PFAS in your inventory. You also need to know if you have any chemical ingredients listed as EPA Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) and Extremely Hazardous Substances (EHSs) to comply with Clean Air Act (CAA) requirements and emergency planning and reporting requirements. Ingredient-level visibility is also a crucial foundation for occupational health and safety (OH&S) management when dealing with Occupational Exposure Limits (OELs), which protect workers from dangerous chemical exposures. Without an easy way of seeing ingredients and flagging chemicals with OELs, your employees may be at risk and your organization may receive violations and associated fines.
As important as ingredient-level information about your chemical inventory is, it’s hard to achieve without the proper tools. The days of manually reviewing safety data sheets (SDSs) are outdated, time-consuming, and subject to human error.
During this webinar, VelocityEHS experts Phil Molé, MPH and Lyn Ip will talk about common challenges in managing chemicals and the ways that ingredient-level indexing, including PFAS indicator tools, can help. You’ll learn about:
- Major regulations, including recent updates, that require you to know your inventory at the ingredient level;
- The ways modern tools allow you to identify chemicals on specific regulatory radar screens, providing high level summaries of the most important information; and
- How to use this information to not only enhance your operational safety management, but also improve your governance of operational risk, building in business resilience and helping to compliance-proof your operations.
