You may have come across the term ‘SDS’ or, more accurately, MSDS, while you were searching for products such as pool chemicals, high grade cleaners like bleach disinfectants, or even possibly hazardous building materials, and may not have given it much thought. However, it’s important that you know that you should always be able to access an SDS document or an MSDS if you are planning to purchase a potentially hazardous substance.
An SDS is a Safety Data Sheet or a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) and must be supplied for the correct handling, transportation and disposal of potentially hazardous materials. The SDS document will detail any known hazards that a particular product may cause relating to health, fire, environmental and reactivity, and how to correctly and safely mitigate those hazards. This could be very important if you, or someone that you know, has specific allergens which may be present in a product that you intend to purchase and subsequently use.
It will also detail exactly what a specific material or chemical is designed to be used for, where it has been manufactured, and what type of hazardous classification it falls under. For example, hospital grade disinfectant bleach is considered to be a corrosive substance and a poison. The MSDS document details what kind of safety warning should be clearly defined on the product and how it interacts with other substances. It also clearly shows exactly what chemicals have been included in the product’s overall make up.