had an exponential effect on the produc-
tion of health and safety information on
chemicals. Coatings companies, particu-
larly the small- and medium-sized ones,
are being overloaded with increased ad-
ministrative activities and costs to comply
with the handling and distribution of
health and safety data.”
Much of the information within SDSs
is about exposure scenarios or the cir-
cumstances under which workers and
consumers are at risk from dangerous
chemicals and what preventive measures
are needed to curb this risk.
There can be several different exposure
scenarios for the same chemical depending on its role within different coating formulations, the uses of those coatings such
as decorative or protective functions and
the way they are applied, for example by
brush or with spraying equipment.
Furthermore chemical companies are
employing different formats and ways of explaining exposure scenarios to coatings
companies and other customers. As a result
paint producers who have more than one
supplier of the same chemical have the difficult task of reconciling differences between
exposure scenarios on identical chemicals.
“The whole concept of exposure scenarios is still under development,” said
Leo Heezen, a Netherlands-based consultant who advises the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) on SDSs
and exposure scenarios.
“There is no official guidance or rules
about a lot of their content, which is why
there are so many differences in those cur-
rently being issued by chemical produc-
ers,” said Heezen. “This can be confusing
for coatings companies and other down-
stream users. Exposure scenarios are in
themselves difficult to understand. They
need to be interpreted by people with a
certain technical expertise.”
CEFIC, the European trade association
for chemical producers, and CEPE, the
European trade body for coatings manu-
facturers, are working together on the
communication of exposure scenarios.
They want to help chemical companies to
develop ways of achieving more unifor-
mity and consistency in the information
distributed in extended SDSs.
One option is to use an electronic sys-
tem on exposure scenario communication
(ESCOM) developed by a consortium of
IT operators which already provides soft-
ware for electronic version of ordinary
SDSs. ESCOM could become a tool for
standardizing scenarios.
www.coatingsworld.com
Coatings World | 27
