OHS Canada 25th Anniversary Best Editorial

Plan of Zeal

January/February 2005

The Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System burst onto the scene to become Canada’s hazard communication standard in the late 1980s. Within the next few years, however, the familiar face of WHMIS is expected to get a fresh new look.

By: William M. Glenn

Both the Hazardous Products Act (HPA) and its associated Controlled Products Regulations -- the foundation of the WHMIS program at the federal level -- will be amended to incorporate a new set of international hazard classification criteria, new requirements for safety data sheets and a new look for product labels.

The process is already in motion. The only questions remaining are: How drastic will those amendments be? How soon can they be expected? And, perhaps more to the point, how much is the switchover going to cost each of us?

The chorus of questions is growing louder because interest in WHMIS has never been greater. Companies that sell labels, MSDS services and training materials are all very, very busy these days. Ron Martin, president of Danatec Educational Services Ltd. in Calgary, says business is brisk for everything from self-teach WHMIS programs to handbooks, instructor manuals, videos, posters and other WHMIS-related products.

"It's not as heavily regulated and enforced as, say, the transportation of dangerous goods," Martin says of WHMIS. If an accident does happen, however, "you won't have enough chairs in your office for all the enforcement officers, lawyers and ministry officials that will suddenly appear at your door."

Because Canadian companies want to continue doing "the right thing," they have started asking a lot of questions about the Globally Harmonized System for the Classification and Labelling of Chemicals. The GHS, as it's more commonly called, is a single, consistent set of hazard communication (hazcom) protocols designed to ease world trade restrictions on chemical products, while maintaining or improving the protections afforded those who buy and ship, sell and use those products. And it's destined to transform WHMIS.

The GHS is a hazcom model developed by an international team of safety experts. If a country hasn't created a WHMIS-type program, it could simply adopt the GHS. There's no need to start from scratch, duplicating the testing and evaluation of all the hazardous chemicals manufactured, reformulated, packaged, shipped, sold, imported or exported.

But if a country already has a basic hazcom system, just integrate the GHS classification criteria, label designs and safety data sheet templates into the regulatory regime to bring its requirements into step with the rest of the world. That's what Canada plans to do.

"Faster" than a seedling agenda

The idea for a uniform hazcom model took root at the United Nations (U.N.) Conference on Environment and Development. (You may remember it as the Earth Summit -- the high-profile eco-gabfest that attracted world leaders to Rio de Janeiro in June of 1992.) Buried among the summit's recommendations on everything from endangered species to global warming -- back in Agenda 21, Chapter 19, Area B -- was a commitment to a "globally harmonized hazard classification and labelling system... to promote the safe use of chemicals, inter alia, at the workplace or in the home. [Such a] system, including material safety data sheets and easily understandable symbols, should be available, if feasible, by the year 2000."

As it turned out, the timing wasn't feasible. But the dream didn't expire with the passing of the deadline.

Work on developing the GHS was undertaken by the Interorganization Programme for the Sound Management of Chemicals (IOMC). A U.N. expert committee is now responsible for making the GHS available for worldwide use and application, as well as the ongoing maintenance of the system.

The IOMC committee eventually crafted a detailed set of chemical classification criteria and hazard communication protocols that should encompass any hazardous chemical that might be encountered in the workplace, in the consumer marketplace, or during the transport of dangerous goods. The GHS is sort of a SuperWHMIS, covering many of the products (pesticides, explosives, drugs and consumer goods, to name a few) currently excluded from the WHMIS purview by statutory decree (see chart on page 46 for selected GHS logos).

The GHS classification criteria will be used to determine what is -- and what is not -- a hazardous material. In turn, that classification dictates the appropriate warning pictogram, special wording and other hazcom messaging that must appear on the label for a particular chemical product. All this preliminary work has been completed; the U.N. Committee of Experts for the Transport of Dangerous Goods and the Globally Harmonized System for the Classification and Labelling of Chemicals published its final draft of the GHS in December of 2002.

More powerful than a solid motive

Until now, WHMIS requirements haven't had to be continually redrafted and amended to conform to evolving international standards. "There's an attitude, certainly among companies that only supply the domestic industrial market, that if it's not broke, don't fix it," says Barbara Foster, senior regulatory consultant with ICC the Compliance Center Inc., a supplier of WHMIS training materials in Dorval, Quebec. And, so far, WHMIS seems to be working pretty well -- at least on the home front.

It's when you enter the global marketplace that WHMIS labelling and other hazcom tools begin to cause problems. It's not unusual for exporters serving the Pacific Rim to prepare 30 different sets of warning labels and associated documentation to meet the regulatory requirements in their various target markets, Foster says.

That's where global harmonization comes into play, standardizing the content of hazcom materials while breaking down potential trade barriers. The format and design of safety data sheets and labels may vary slightly from country to country, but the same information categories will be available on every one.

ICC and other suppliers are watching developments very closely. When the GHS goes through, the WHMIS service market "will have to start over from scratch," Foster says. Training materials will have to be reviewed and rewritten, MSDSs reorganized and up-dated, and product labels redesigned to meet the new requirements. Remember the mad rush to comply when WHMIS made its debut back in 1988? It's set to happen again.

Able to leap tall bureaucracies

Even before the U.N. finished its final draft of the GHS, Ottawa had already committed to supporting the international harmonization of chemical hazcom requirements. This will mean amending the interlocking federal, provincial and territorial statutes, regulations, policies and programs that drive WHMIS, as well as those that govern the transportation of dangerous goods, the management of pest control products and the labelling of consumer chemical products. And this will take some doing.

The GHS is not an international convention or treaty that can be imposed by Parliamentary decree, forcing the bureaucracy to fall into line. It is a non-binding instrument, a better way of doing things. And like all good things, implementation will take time.

Before adopting the GHS, Ottawa has promised tripartite consultation, involving governments, industry and labour. From the start, WHMIS has been a consensus-based and consensus-driven instrument that's been adopted by each province and territory. The feds have said they will honour that cooperative tradition.

The creation of WHMIS was "a very significant achievement" in Canada's occupational health and safety history, says David Bideshi, national WHMIS coordinator at Health Canada.

The implementation of the GHS, however, will constitute the first major change to the WHMIS regime since its inception in 1988. At the nuts-and-bolts level, here's how it will work:

• - Existing criteria used to classify hazardous materials into different classes and subclasses will be revised.
• - The standard WHMIS label will be changed to incorporate some new hazard symbols, signal words and hazard statements, and the familiar WHMIS hatched border may be eliminated.
• - Information required on an MSDS will be expanded and reorganized, increasing from a nine- to a 16-heading format (regulators have accepted MSDSs in this format for at least a decade).

Since 1988, explosives, pest control products, radioactive materials, hazardous wastes, tobacco products, cosmetics, drugs, food, wood or wood products, and a whole list of packaged consumer products were expressly exempted from both WHMIS supplier labelling and MSDS requirements. Current WHMIS exemptions were last reviewed in 1993. Since then, nothing.

Some things will be different under GHS. "Consumer chemicals and pest control products will be covered under the GHS," says Abbey Klugerman, head of regulatory affairs for the national WHMIS program at Health Canada. That means hazcom protocols, equivalent to those employed under WHMIS, will be applied to hazardous workplace products controlled under the Pest Control Products Act or the Consumer Chemicals and Containers Regulations. Whether or not these products are actually covered under WHMIS, "workers will enjoy the same level of protection," read the same labels and have access to the same data sheets, Klugerman says.

Bringing more of the other exempted materials into the WHMIS fold may present a challenge. While the bureaucracy can tinker with regulatory requirements, provisions dealing with the WHMIS exclusions reside in the Hazardous Products Act and making adjustments to the statute would require an onerous detour through Parliament. Progress on legislative renewal is at the discretion of the current minority government. Based on public pronouncements to date, tackling legislative exclusions does not appear to be high on the "to do" list.

Up in the whys and wherefores

Concerns have been raised over the effect the GHS will have on our ability to protect trade secrets, on the compatibility of our hazcom system with protocols used in the United States, on the economic fallout of a large scale shift to a new labelling and MSDS format, and on the myriad technical issues that inevitably arise during the adoption of a new classification system. Fortunately, there's no need to scrap WHMIS entirely and parachute a brand new hazcom system into its place. The standardized GHS components will fit nicely into the current regime.

While implementation of the GHS will not alter the primary objectives of WHMIS -- hazard classification, hazard communication, and worker education and training -- "you can expect substantive changes," Klugerman says, especially the classification criteria, labelling and data sheet requirements.

The GHS is envisioned as a series of building blocks. You don't have to use all the blocks to rebuild your regulatory castle, but those you do opt to use must be adopted verbatim. "This allows you to look at the GHS and take whatever parts are appropriate to your needs," Klugerman says.

For instance, the GHS defines five different subclasses of acutely toxic chemicals, each subclass with its own unique criteria and identifying pictograms. WHMIS may, for example, adopt the top four into its classification regime; transportation of dangerous goods people may find that the top three meet their needs; and the consumer chemical crowd may take all five.

While the classification scheme set forth under the Controlled Products Regulations may not be explicit with respect to each of the more than 750,000 products subject to WHMIS labelling and MSDS requirements in this country, there are regulatory "catch-all" provisions that effectively brings them all under the auspices of WHMIS.

Bideshi says he "does not expect that products currently subject to WHMIS to drop out of the system, nor a significant number of additional products to be encompassed through adoption of the GHS criteria." Still, it is necessary to be prepared for some obvious changes to hazcom tools -- MSDSs, labels and symbols -- used to educate and warn users of potential hazards. It's a blur


So your safety data sheets might look a little different. Does anyone ever look at an MSDS anyway? "Most definitely," says Paul Cachia, owner of Debolt Data Depository, an Edmonton-based on-line supplier of MSDSs. "WHMIS is still very pertinent today," Cachia says.

A provincial inspector may conduct a routine audit of the workplace's MSDSs to check that the most current information is on file, Cachia says. And even if there's no audit, he points out, employees are acutely aware of their rights to the most recent data on the chemicals and products they handle on the job.

Cachia is hoping the GHS will force U.S. suppliers to keep their hazcom products up-to-date. While a data sheet from a Canadian producer may look different or be organized differently than one from a U.S. source, he says, both contain very similar information. But he complains it can be difficult to obtain recent MSDSs from the U.S., especially from smaller or regional suppliers. "They don't always update their material every three years," he says, which can spell real trouble with WHMIS compliance requirements.

The pending changes to WHMIS are already garnering a lot of interest -- and more than a little concern -- among Canada's industrial, manufacturing and service sectors.

A service company representative who attended a Toronto workshop on GHS's potential impact said trade secrecy is shaping up to be a big concern. Canadian companies are subject to a protracted, complicated and relatively expensive review process if they don't wish to disclose a product ingredient on an MSDS. "And once you've made an application to the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission, you open up your entire MSDS to scrutiny," he said.

While the U.S. evaluation system is superficially similar in design, it's much simpler in practice. You simply declare an ingredient or ingredients to be trade secrets (no need to prove your case) and that's how it stands until someone mounts a formal challenge.

At the other end of the spectrum, producers are worried that a European-style full disclosure system could open up trade secrets to public scrutiny. No word yet on where Canada will end up.

It's germane

Europe is still the largest producer of chemicals in the world. And since Europe is moving ahead with the GHS, there is a lot of incentive to follow suit.

But the U.S. is now lagging behind, despite its early support for the project. Some Canadians are, therefore, left wondering why the GHS is being "foisted on us" when our biggest trading partner doesn't seem eager to adopt the approach anytime soon. With Canada stuck in the middle, between the progressive Europeans and the recalcitrant Americans, Ottawa is now playing a diplomatic role in pushing implementation.

"America was a major force, as was Canada, in the development of the GHS," says Alan Cotterill, manager of Health Canada's policy and programme services office. "We would like the GHS adopted in a North American context, with implementation in Canada, the United States and Mexico around the same time." To this end, there have been some preliminary discussions conducted through NAFTA.

Health Canada is currently spearheading the Canadian position on the GHS. A General Issues Committee (GIC) for Canadian implementation of the GHS -- with members from organized labour, industry, federal agencies and a number of provinces -- began meeting this summer. The Canadian consultation process revolves around four multi-stakeholder sectoral working groups -- pest control products, workplace chemicals, consumer products, and the transport of dangerous goods -- reflecting the delineation of regulatory authority under federal legislation.

The GIC is not a decision-making or steering body, but provides oversight to ensure objectives are met consistently across sectors, says group chair Cotterill. "Most of the action is taking place within the sectoral working groups," he says. "After they've made their recommendations, we will help coordinate the legislative and regulatory changes that need to be made."

A GIC working group is now looking at the classification criteria section-by-section, comparing what's in the GHS with what's in WHMIS, says Health Canada's Klugerman. Once the working group has considered all the hazard classification inconsistencies, it will move on to the outstanding hazcom questions.

It's SuperWHMIS

While not all the working groups are working at the same pace, Cotterill says, 2008 is still the target date for implementation. By that time, the necessary statutory and regulatory amendments should be promulgated and the phase-in of the GHS could begin in earnest. "We are going to include a reasonable phase-in period so that (the switchover) will be less costly," Cotterill says. "But we can't drag our feet either. We will have to strike a balance between the timing and any anticipated costs."

Many stakeholders are worried about the potential costs of implementing the GHS. Labels for thousands of products would need to be redesigned and printed. Data sheets would need to be redrafted, translated and replaced. Training materials, manuals and software would need to be updated. Old stock would need to be used up or trashed. Staff would need to be retrained.

The GHS was largely industry-driven to facilitate trade and reduce the attendant costs of producing the requisite hazcom materials for different countries. "We don't wish to inflict an unwarranted economic burden on industry when a primary consideration for the establishment of an internationally harmonized system has been to reduce it," says Bideshi, national WHMIS coordinator. "As the U.S. is Canada's biggest trading partner, industry wants to synchronize implementation of the GHS with the U.S."

Whenever it's implemented and whatever it costs, "the GHS is going to be embraced by larger companies," predicts Danatec's Martin. The multinationals, exporters juggling foreign suppliers and markets, anyone who is trying to expand their business beyond home borders find the current hazcom requirements frustrating. "However, many smaller companies don't understand the global impacts and won't be falling into line happily," Martin adds. That means Health Canada still has a lot work to do, educating companies about the proposed changes.

William M. Glenn is associate editor of hazardous substances for ohs canada. The GHS Situational Analysis Document is available at www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hecs-sesc/ghs.