Last Update  08/25/07 07:48 AM

Join the MSDSSEARCH eGroup

MSDS-SEARCH STATEMENT OF POSITION

Over the past eight years our company has accumulated an enormous amount of information regarding MSDS administration methods. The most disturbing observation is the terrible waste involved in the current systems being used.  One can quickly grasp the tremendous financial burden of 7 million U.S. businesses each reinventing the wheel as they attempt to build their own MSDS management strategies. It is intuitively obvious that there are substantial economies of scale to be realized by bringing to bear an order and discipline not currently being applied on a national level.

Having spent time with EH&S managers from a representative sample of Fortune 10 companies, small 50 man manufacturing firms, and government agencies, we can report that three requests are routinely voiced:

• First, users of MSDSs want to go to one location to obtain all of the documents they require
• Second, they want the documents to qualify as being "From the Manufacturer"
• Third, they want assurance that the document they receive is the most current available.

None of these requests is unreasonable or even particularly difficult from a technological perspective given today's electronic capabilities. Unfortunately this solution has yet to be implemented. It is evident to us that everyone agrees on what needs to be done, it's just that no one is willing to step forward and do it.

So let's be clear. What is the solution? A single source of MSDS documents that are furnished by manufacturers for the convenience of their customers, maintained current, and provided at no charge to any user with web access.

The savings for providers of MSDSs, in the words of one senior Petroleum Industry executive, "are significant, if not dramatic." (We should emphasize the point that providers of MSDSs are also users even if only for their own internal applications.)

The financial arguments are indisputable. Users of MSDSs would realize savings greater than 90%, providers in excess of 99%. While these numbers may seem unrealistic, they can be easily demonstrated and documented (you will find them on this web site under "Incentives"). Manufacturers who feel that they have met their customer's requirements by placing their MSDSs on their own websites clearly do not understand the dynamics of the problem. Over 80% of all queries are by product name, synonym or product number because the user does not know the manufacturer's name. In addition, the time and expense of visiting 250 websites to maintain a library of 1000 MSDSs is not a workable solution.

We at MSDS-SEARCH.COM, Inc., have taken it upon ourselves to build a web site called MSDS-SEARCH. It is fully functional and waiting to be loaded. All that is required is for manufacturers to make their MSDSs available so that the documents can be supplied to users (their customers) free of charge.