Hazardous Chemicals & the GHS: Safety Data Sheets

November 28, 2019 | 225 views

Safety Data Sheets (SDSs) can provide a huge amount of valuable information, but on their own, don't outline how to safely use a chemical in your workplace.   Whilst an SDS outlines a range of chemical properties and general safety information, the generic information documented in an SDS is just that, generic. Too often organisations rely on this generic instruction to guide workers on safe chemical handling techniques. Certainly, reviewing information within an SDS is essential, but on its own the information provides limited value as the manufacturer, supplier or importer hasn't considered what you plan on using the chemical for or how you plan on using it, two key factors in deciding control measures. Information like Hazard Statements can only tell you what is harmful (eg. Harmful in contact with skin), but not how to prevent contact with skin beyond generic suggestions for PPE (eg. gloves).

Spotlight

Shree Gum and Chemicals

Shree Gum and Chemicals is a renowned Manufacturer and Supplier of Guar Gum Powder in India. Our Guar Gum Powder is widely known for its purity and effectiveness. The Guar Gum Powder that we offer is uniform in its physical and chemical characteristics, and is commonly used as a thickening agent and stabilizer. We cater Guar Gum Powder to many industries such as Food, Mining, Textile, Paper, Pharmaceutical, Animal Feed, etc. The company also manufactures Katonic T.S. Powder for the use in the paper industry.

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Chemical Technology

Petrochemicals markets complexity is only going to grow and grow

Article | August 2, 2022

NICE WORK, if you get can get it. A trucking company in Fort Worth, Texas, is offering to pay experienced drivers $14,000 a week – $728,000 a year – as the US struggles with a nationwide shortage of truckers or lorry drivers. This reminds me of perhaps an apocryphal tale, from the height of the last Australian mining boom. Before iron ore prices collapsed in late 2014, there was a story about workers at mining site road junctions who operated manual “Stop and Go” signs. They were said to be earning more than Australian dollar (A$) 200,000 a year. Before you pack in your job as, say, a petrochemicals sales manager and head to Texas or mine sites in Western Australia, there is the risk that when you arrive at the door of your new prospective employer, the bubble might have already burst. This is assuming we are in bubble conditions.The pressure is clearly building in petrochemicals and other commodity markets as prices in some regions remain at record highs or continue to rise. Today’s prices are the results of shortages of commodities supply (for example in petrochemicals, an outcome of the US winter storms), very strong demand and supply chain disruptions.I am beginning to believe that the latter is the biggest reason for commodity price inflation which is feeding through into sharp rises in the cost of finished goods – and a lack of goods availability. It is delivering and manufacturing enough stuff that seems to be at the heart of today’s problems due to shortages of everything from container freight space and semiconductors to wooden pallets, tin cans, metal drums, cardboard – and US truck drivers.

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Chemical Technology

Demographics are reshaping petrochemicals trade flows, investment patterns and demand

Article | June 6, 2022

TEN YEARS AGO, fellowblogger Paul Hodgesand Ifirst highlighted the leading rolethat changing demographics would play in reshaping petrochemicals supply and demand. We have been emphasising the importance of demographics ever since. Demographics have, of course, always been a critical shaper of economies throughout human history. But during the last 70 years, there have been such major changes in demographics that the study of demographics must be at the very heart of your company’s strategy. The Babyboomer generation in the West led to a surge in demand as the rapid increase in babies born in the 1950s and early 1960s joined the workforce from the 1970s onwards. This helps explain high levels of inflation during that decade because too much demand was chasing too little supply. Another driver of inflation was the Middle East embargos against oil exports to the West because of the West’s support for Israel. Then came the 1990s and first the integration of Eastern Europe into the global economy. This helped dampen inflationary pressures because of the plentiful supply of workers in the east willing to work for low wages in export-focused factories. This reduced the cost of finished goods in the West. Next came Deng Xiaoping’s critically important“southern tour”in the early 1990s and China’s gradual integration into the global economy. China increasingly leveraged its very youthful population to again make cheap goods to export to the West. Hundreds of millions of young people were willing to migrate from the countryside to China’s coastal cities to work in export-focused manufacturing plants. The world began to talk about the “China price” and how it was further depressing global inflation.

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Chemical Technology

The pandemic, climate change, plastic waste and the great divide: the world in 2025

Article | July 20, 2022

NOBODY SHOULD be surprised that the developing world has fallen behind in the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the region is a long way from recovering from the pandemic.Evidence to this effect emerged last week in comments made by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). “In many emerging and developing economies, emissions are heading upwards while clean energy investments are faltering, creating a dangerous fault line in global efforts to reach climate and sustainable energy goals,” said Birol. At the current rate, carbon dioxide emissions from developing countries largely in Asia, Africa and Latin America are set to increase by 5bn tonnes/year over the next two decades, according to the IEA, as access to power increases.At present, around 785m people worldwide have no access to electricity. There are also 2.6bn people without access to clean cooking options.

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Chemical Management

Global polyethylene demand boom likely, increasing the sustainability challenge

Article | June 15, 2021

IT FEELS LIKE several lifetimes ago. If you recall, way back in November-December 2019 Asian variable cost integrated naphtha-based polyethylene (PE) margins turned negative because of the increase in US capacity. Then in January the following year, deep Asian and Middle East operating rate cuts returned some order to the market. Then, bang, as we all know, the pandemic arrived and turned everything on its head. The pandemic has, in my view, accentuated trends that were already well underway. I believe this means that the supply-driven downturn that started in late 2019 will not return.Long before coronavirus upended everyone’s lives, PE demand was becoming increasingly divorced from GDP growth because of the shifting nature of end-use demand. Booming internet sales was, I believe, a major factor behind the split between the growth of the overall economies in the developed world plus China and PE demand.The average product bought online is dropped 17 times because of the large number of people involved in the logistics chain, according to Forbes. This had led to a surge in demand for protective packaging made not from PE and other polymers such as polypropylene, expandable polystyrene and PET films (I will look at their demand growth prospects in later posts).Despite sustainability pressures, the scale of demand for stuff bought online translated to a lot more consumption of virgin polymers.

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Spotlight

Shree Gum and Chemicals

Shree Gum and Chemicals is a renowned Manufacturer and Supplier of Guar Gum Powder in India. Our Guar Gum Powder is widely known for its purity and effectiveness. The Guar Gum Powder that we offer is uniform in its physical and chemical characteristics, and is commonly used as a thickening agent and stabilizer. We cater Guar Gum Powder to many industries such as Food, Mining, Textile, Paper, Pharmaceutical, Animal Feed, etc. The company also manufactures Katonic T.S. Powder for the use in the paper industry.

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Chemical Watch | March 18, 2020

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