Glossary → COSHH

COSHH.

control of substances hazardous to health, the UK duty to assess exposure and then control it

COSHH is the UK counterpart to HazCom, and the difference is the shape of the duty: it is not a list of banned chemicals, it is an obligation to assess and control. What the regulations cover is broad on purpose: anything with a workplace exposure limit, anything classified as irritant, harmful, corrosive or worse, biological agents, and ordinary dust above the stated concentrations. The catch for a print shop is that the assessment must also cover substances your own process creates. Powder from a DTF shaker, mist off a heat press, fume from an unvented cure tunnel: none of that arrives in a labelled drum, so none of it is in the SDS binder. HSE's control order is eliminate, change the process, contain, then control, with PPE last rather than first, and a shop that reached straight for gloves and a mask has not done a COSHH assessment. It has bought PPE, and an inspector reads the difference in about a minute.

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