Hi
Material Safety Data Sheets are not meant only for displaying at places where chemical substances are stored; MSDS are a set of standard quick reference documents for properties of materials and chemicals. Useful information on compatibility with other substances, risk of fire and explosion, storage, first-aid, waste disposal etc., are provided in MSDS. MSDS contain quite a few properties that do not change or/which are fundamental (e.g. boiling point, flash point etc.). There are properties like TLV (C or TWA) LD50, BEI etc., which are important and change as and when new information is made available on the substance in question.(e.g. TLV (TWA) of mercury has come down from 0.05 mg per cu.m. to 0.02 mg per cu.m. in the last 20 years). Hence it is important to review and update the MSDS periodically (in some countries maintaining MSDS is a mandatory requirement under legislations like the Factories Act; in those cases the updating becomes a requirement under 4.3.2 anyway). As the information contained in MSDS is used by different functions, it is necessary to control the document to ensure that only the current information available at relevant functions and is used to avoid risk to the organization.
With kind regards,
Ramakrishnan