Washington State University
Environmental Health & Safety Safety Data Sheets

Safety Data Sheets

  • Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) are documents provided by manufacturers describing the physical and health hazards of hazardous chemicals and trade name products and must be accessible to all employees on all work shifts. Laboratories must keep on file any SDS received with incoming shipments of hazardous chemicals. They may be stored in hard copy or electronic form. Employees must be able to access the information immediately 24/7.

    It is strongly recommended that a person or persons be designated as responsible for obtaining and maintaining SDSs for hazardous chemicals used in the laboratory. This person would ensure that SDSs are available to all laboratory employees, and would obtain SDSs for laboratory chemicals for which none are present.

  • Environmental Health and Safety provides additional information about safety data sheets.