by Maria Ofitserova
As some of you probably noticed, a number of Pickering Laboratories products are now arriving with different looking labels. In addition to the product name, part number, lot number and expiration date, the labels now also display red and black pictograms as well as a lot of fine print text. What is going on?
We would like to first reassure our loyal customers that you are getting the correct product and absolutely nothing about the formulation of our products has changed. Beginning June 1, 2015 OSHA enacted modifications to its Hazard Communication Standard to align it with GHS specifications. This means that all companies manufacturing and selling chemicals are now required to comply with GHS specifications when labeling their products. This also means that the information listed in Safety Data Sheets (SDS) needed to be updated and presented in a standardized way.
Pickering Laboratories has been working for several months on updating our Safety Data Sheets to comply with new regulations. We encourage all of our customers to visit our website at www.pickeringlabs.com/library/material-safety-data-sheets/ and download new SDSs for your records.
We also spend a lot of time designing GHS-compliant labels for our products which proved not as easy as one might think! A lot of our products come in small bottles and fitting all the required information was a tall order. We would like to particularly thank Anita Gribaldo, who was responsible for formatting the text for all our new labels, for her patience and perseverance. She has done a great job and we are really proud of our new look.
According to our updated Safety Data Sheets there are now a small number of Pickering products that require treatment as hazardous materials during shipment. Rebecca Smith, Tony McIsaac and I spend several days at IATA training learning more than we ever wanted to know about shipping lithium batteries, dry ice as well as chemicals like Thiofluor and OPA. We saw some graphic pictures of what can happen to lithium batteries if they are not packaged and shipped correctly so our new motto is “Friends don’t allow friends to ship lithium batteries without IATA certification”.
Please be assured that all chemicals leaving Pickering Laboratories are properly labeled, packaged and shipped according to DOT and IATA regulations.
Stay safe at home and at the work place!
