Workgroup meeting notes Fri 1/7/22

Via GoToMeeting (thanks Doug Strog of GLTAC for hosting).

There was much discussion about what specific information would populate a Visual Chemical Safety VCS “Picture”.

Some of the attendees were thinking that the information would be obtained directly from the Safety Data Sheet SDS, and that’s certainly one option.

A limiting factor with respect to that is the typically generic nature of the Spill response and Disposal sections especially.

It is anticipated that the “VCS Picture” would be a template or templates that could be filled out at the individual workplace level for optimum customization of this information.

One participant discussed putting an intermediate filter on that information at the individual workplace level to compensate for missing, deficient or contradictory information on the SDS, and some of the pros and cons and challenges of that approach were discussed.

A case study was shared where 40,000 waste profile sheets condensed into about 75 common categories of Safe Use Instructions (text at the time) with about 350 chemical/disposal process-specific ones. This was done simply by answering several straight-forward questions such as Flash point, pH, and DOT Hazard class, among others, then displaying a drop-down list and asking “is it like one of these”? If not, the user could copy the closest, make changes, and save (ideal) or create a new one from scratch.

10,000 Safety Data Sheets at an Auto Assembly plant, of which about 1,000 are on-site at any time (based on the SARA 312 Tier 2 report) condensed to about 20 common Safe Use Instructions and about 50 other chemical and process specific ones.

Kathy is working on turning the 2 most challenging pictograms (in her opinion), the exclamation point and the health hazard (“exploding chest”) pictograms into sub-visuals that

How much is an acutely toxic dose in units a layperson can understand?

A friend once said “everyone told me what to do, but no one told me how”.

Track with me for the remaining 56 days and we’ll go through the “how to” together in exquisite (painful) detail.

This workflow will branch into multiple workflows with lots of steps.

What’s your guess of what the total number of specific tasks that need to be done to get your Tier 2 out the door?

I’m guessing 125. :)

Here’s to March 2nd!