Current News “Globally Harmonized System (GHS) of Characterization and Labeling of Chemicals”

1. Current News“Globally Harmonized System (GHS)ofCharacterization and Labeling of Chemicals” DOE and DOE Contractors Industrial Hygiene Meeting in Conjunction with the 2012 American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition June 18, 2012 Indianapolis, Indiana Robert Weeks (Remote), Los Alamos National Laboratory

2. History Behind the GHS • 1992United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) concluded “A globally harmonized classification and compatible labelling system…should be available , if feasible , by the year 2000”. • 1994 OSHA Hazard Communication 29 CFR 1910.1200 • 1996 UN Committee (IOMC) revised terms of reference/ work program. • 2003 First edition of the GHS was published by the United Nations. Since then it has been updated, revised and improved roughly every two years. • 2009 OSHA published in the Federal Register a revised HAZCOM regulation for public comment. • Late 2011 and/or early 2012 the Globally Harmonized System was discussed in the monthly meetings of the Industrial Hygiene/Occupational Safety Special Interest Group (IH OS SIG) headed by Deborah McFalls of ORISE. • 2012 OSHA published the 29 CFR 1910.1200 Hazard Communication Final Rule in the Federal Register on March 26, 2012 with an effective date of May 25, 2012. This particular Final Rule is consistent with the Globally Harmonized System. • Late 2011 and/or early 2012 the subject of the Globally Harmonized System was discussed in the monthly meetings of the Industrial Hygiene/Occupational Safety Special Interest Group (IH/OH SIG) headed by Deborah McFalls of ORISE

3. GHS History (Continued) • Late 2011 and/or early 2012 the Globally Harmonized System was discussed in the monthly meetings of the DOE Industrial Hygiene/Occupational Safety Special Interest Group (IH/OS SIG) headed by Deborah McFalls of ORISE. • 2012 OSHA published the 29 CFR 1910.1200 Hazard Communication Final Rule in the Federal Register on March 26th with an effective date of May 25th , 2012. • Note: As published, this rule is consistent with the United Nations Globally Harmonized System of Categorization and Labeling of Chemicals. In the United States it will affect more than 40 million workers and more than 5 million workplaces.

4. What is the IH/OS SIG? • The Industrial Hygiene/Occupational Safety Special Interest Group (IH/OS SIG) consists of a group of DOE and Contractor workers who nominally talk via telephone conference on a monthly basis to discuss problems, issues, concerns and updates of common interest throughout the Complex. It was through the IH/OS SIG that the EFCOG GHS working group was established.

5. What is EFCOG and how does it concern itself with HCS-GHS? • The Energy Facilities Contractors Operating Group, (EGCOG) is a volunteer organization and it involves subject matter experts and others from companies who manage DOE facilities. It is funded by DOE and its mission is to reduce DOE program costs and increase contractor performance. • In the context of HCS-GHS, the “EFCOG Project Team on the Revised Hazard Communication Standard” has been established to provide information that will help DOE and DOE contractors meet the training requirements of 29 CFR 1910.1200 as they relate to GHS.

6. What has been done and what is being done by the EFCOG HCS-GHS working group? • The working group has been established and Dina Siegel of Los Alamos serves as the Team Leader of the HCS-GHS working group. This working group has members from DOE HQ, the NTC, most of the facilities in the DOE Complex and training staff from the United Steelworkers Union. • It has one hour conference calls once a week and sub-groups frequently have conference calls in addition to the working group calls. The one hour calls usually have 15-20 participants. • The Group decided that its first effort would be to establish training tools for one facet of the GHS and to allow this to be discussed relative to it being used as a model for the remainder of the efforts.

7. What has been done and what is being done by the EFCOG HCS-GHS working group? Part 2 • The first product will be to provide training material for the Flammables pictogram. To do this three subgroup members (a technical team) have assembled technical details that needed to be included. These technical details were then addressed by the training subgroup and a product prepared. This product will be presented to the HCS-GHS working group during the regular Tuesday morning (June 19th) weekly conference call. • An important “product” of the SIG and the EFCOG groups has been the recognizing of information that already exists so that we will not be reinventing the wheel. A particularly valuable source has been the GHS OSHA HCS document in which the OSHA HAZCOM standard is compared section by section with the corresponding parts of the GHS and the differences compared. Certain parts of 1910.1200, e.g., training, are stronger than the GHS and some parts of the GHS are stronger than the HCS. • Time lines have been established for various parts of the project. Hopefully a final product will be ready to be “beta tested” by the end of September.

8. Pictogram Training Objectives • Terminal Objective: Interpret the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard pictograms by identifying the chemical hazards they represent. • Enabling Objectives Identify the hazards depicted by the following pictograms: Health Hazard pictogram Flame pictogram Exclamation pictogram Gas Cylinder pictogram Corrosion pictogram Exploding Bomb pictogram certain other pictograms

9. Where Do We Go from Here? • A major step forward in sharing GHS ideas across the complex will be the DOE/NNSA Cross-complex Learning/Training Teams Workshop: • Sandia National Laboratories/Albuquerque, NM • Tuesday, June 19 and Wednesday June 20 • 8:00 am – 5:00 pm • Contacts: • Charline Wells, Senior Mgr, (505) 845-8990 • Belinda Holley, Department Mgr, (505) 844-1010

10. Thank you! • Especially to Deborah McFalls with the IH/OS SIG and to Dina Siegel for leading the EFCOG GHS work and also to the many others who are actively participating in the EFCOG GHS work.