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Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS)

If hazardous materials are present in your workplace, you must establish and maintain an effective Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) program. You’ll need to do this in consultation with your joint committee or worker health and safety representative.

WHMIS provides information about many hazardous materials that may be used or present in the workplace. WHMIS calls such materials hazardous products. Examples of these products include materials that are flammable, explosive, oxidizing, poisonous, infectious, corrosive or dangerously reactive.

Basic requirements

WHMIS’s goal is to reduce the risk of injury or disease by helping to ensure that specific health and safety information about hazardous products is clearly communicated to workers. The system accomplishes this goal through a labelling process as well as regulations that require you to provide and maintain a safety data sheet (SDS) for each hazardous product present in the workplace.

In addition, you must ensure that general WHMIS education is provided to workers. WHMIS education includes general information on the following:

  • Elements of the WHMIS program
  • Major hazards of the hazardous products in use in the workplace
  • Rights and responsibilities of employers and workers
  • Content required on labels and SDSs, and the significance of this information

You must ensure that a worker who works with or near a hazardous product has access to all hazard information concerning that hazardous product. This includes any information of which you are aware (or ought to be aware) concerning the use, storage, handling and disposal of that product.

You must also make sure that a worker who works with or near a hazardous product is given job-specific training in:

  • How to store, handle, use, and dispose of the hazardous product
  • What to do if the hazardous product is accidentally released into the work environment
  • What to do in case of an emergency involving the hazardous product

The training must be specific to your workplace. It must also cover the safe work procedures and emergency response procedures to be used in that workplace.

Information provided by HARRIS & COMPANY. For more information about HARRIS & COMPANY, please visit harrisco.com.

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