What’s in your box?

What do each of these items have in common?

They can all be found in gyms (CrossFit or otherwise) and also in many other businesses across the world. The other commonality they share is that they all contain chemicals that need to be assessed by law and considered in terms of risk to health, safety and also to the environment.

Historically, the classification of chemicals from country to country has widely varied, leading to major inconsistencies where a substance could be classed as hazardous or toxic in once country, but not in another.

The Earth Summits in 1992 and 2002 recognised this as an important global issue and as such the United Nations developed a Globally Harmonised System (GHS) of classification – a single, worldwide system for classifying and communicating the hazardous properties of industrial and consumer chemicals.

While each country is responsible for creating the national or local legislation to implement the GHS, the information on the hazardous properties of substances remains the same (and also provides a structure for countries who don’t yet have a classification and labelling system). To date, 72 countries have adopted the GHS, including the UK, USA, Australia, France, Russia, Germany, Spain and South Africa.

Part of the management system created by Ellipsis Risk Management is an overarching document that pulls all this information together into one place so that the business risks can be assessed and mitigation/control measures put in place. This information is therefore valid for each of the 72 countries in which GHS has been adopted, and can be used in line with local/national legislation to ensure health,safety and environmental risks have been assessed and businesses remain compliant.

Contact us for more information at riskmanagement@crossfitellipsis.com

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