Posted By Daniel Stonehouse Good afternoon. I am working at a large chemical manufacturing site in England (no names please), where we purchase hundreds of chemicals from dozens of suppliers, in addition to manufacturing our own. I have been attempting to verify that the MSDS we have for some of the more potentially hazardous chemicals (they are ALL covered by CHIP,etc,)are the most up to date. I have found the following: (1)some suppliers send some MSDS by post and these are inputted into my company database as they arrive. They are up to date. (2) Some do not. Either we have to phone up and ask, or we visit their website: sometimes the website details do not match what i am looking for. if there are material changes to an MSDS, how do we know this apart from trawling through websites every month, phoning people, emailing, etc? Plus the fact that some suppliers are very difficult to contact when it comes to asking them which version of the MSDS they are using . In some circumstances i have found i am holding a more up to date version than they do- yes, honestly - and that was a LARGE chemicals supplier! QUESTION - How do people elsewhere ensure that the MSDS they have are the most up to date copy? Or is it a case of doing our best? I have read the CHIP regs, and i understand that only changes that require the user to undertake a re-evaluation of risks to Health and Safety need to be communicated, but it looks less than good when we are using ten year old MSDS when there are new ones in existence. Over to you.

Posted By Coshh Assessor Some companies go so far as to write annually to all their suppliers asking for up to date msds [and then claim that this constitutes their COSHH assessment review!], to my mind this is crazy if it's more than a few products. If the msds are more than a couple of years old I would normally ring the supplier when reviewing the assessment to check though.

Posted By Jim Walker I must be missing something here. You are the customer - the supplier does what you want or you find another supplier. Drag the supplier's rep in (don't discuss it with them over the phone as it will get lost) and tell him what they are going to do and how often. Of course you need to get your own buyer on side. You could cost up the hidden costs of your currrent system and get the accountants to factor this into the bought product.