It’s sensible to always label things; one white powder looks much like another white powder, and you can’t tell the difference from a bottle of Nitric acid and a bottle of water just by looking at them, but how should you label them?
In the “good-ol-days” bottles were glass, either clear or amber, and just had a sticky label with “Sulphuric Acid – 1M” written on them. For the really stupid it also often said “DO NOT DRINK”.
These days, we have J.T.Baker storage colour codes, NFPA 704 fire diamond codes, data from the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet), Risk and Safety phrases, and hazard pictograms. Don’t forget the label also needs the plain English name of the contents; the molecular weight and chemical formula also make sense. Then there are the CAS and EC numbers. Each container doesn’t need a label, more a complete data-sheet.
There’s something else worrying I’ve noticed, there seems to be a lack of consistency.
I’ve seen the same chemical with different NFPA codes and hazard pictograms, so it’s not easy to label a bottle correctly.
I’m going to write some software that can print labels out, mainly for my own use but when it’s done I’ll share it on here for those that are interested.
The real purpose of this post is to say “check everything”. Don’t just read one datasheet and assume that it’s correct. I’ve started looking at three different datasheets to see what they say. Sometimes it’s obvious that there’s a simple typo on one of the sheets, but some of the discrepancies are a little more worrying.
In the “good-ol-days” bottles were glass, either clear or amber, and just had a sticky label with “Sulphuric Acid – 1M” written on them. For the really stupid it also often said “DO NOT DRINK”.
These days, we have J.T.Baker storage colour codes, NFPA 704 fire diamond codes, data from the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet), Risk and Safety phrases, and hazard pictograms. Don’t forget the label also needs the plain English name of the contents; the molecular weight and chemical formula also make sense. Then there are the CAS and EC numbers. Each container doesn’t need a label, more a complete data-sheet.
There’s something else worrying I’ve noticed, there seems to be a lack of consistency.
I’ve seen the same chemical with different NFPA codes and hazard pictograms, so it’s not easy to label a bottle correctly.
I’m going to write some software that can print labels out, mainly for my own use but when it’s done I’ll share it on here for those that are interested.
The real purpose of this post is to say “check everything”. Don’t just read one datasheet and assume that it’s correct. I’ve started looking at three different datasheets to see what they say. Sometimes it’s obvious that there’s a simple typo on one of the sheets, but some of the discrepancies are a little more worrying.