A Cleaner's Visual on Using Safety Data Sheets, Part 1

If you know anything about me or my politics, I prefer the government butt out whenever possible. Less is more. But there are many things the government gets right, and one of those is the requirement for Safety Data Sheets. 

First off, what is a SDS sheet? It's a breakdown of information on the cleaning chemicals that you use. Have you ever used a product and inadvertently damaged a surface? Have you ever used a product and it caused a reaction on your hand or skin? Have you ever used a product and had a chemical reaction that led to difficulty in breathing? Well, the government created SDS sheets to protect us from us. These sheets detail and document the do's and don't of using everyday products like glass cleaner, multipurpose cleaner, oven cleaner, bleach, and 100s of other cleaning products we may or may not use in our cleaning process. It covers 16 different topics including hazard communications, product identifiers, ingredients, first aid, PPE needs, and so much more. 

I can give two examples on how it helped us:

1) About 20 years ago we were cleaning a private school and our employee felt the need to clean the outside windows on the ground level, even though they weren't part of the SOW. She sprayed glass cleaner directly on the window. But it was a windy day and a gust of wind pushed the glass cleaner back at her and into her eyes. She couldn't see. There was a school nurse on duty and helped wash out her eyes but insisted she go to the hospital to get checked out. That nurse contacted our office and within 2 minutes, a copy of the SDS sheet for that specific product was in her hands via email (even though we had a SDS binder on site). In the end the employee was OK and suggested she should never spray into the wind, or even clean outside again.

2) Around the same time as #1, we had another situation. In this case our employee cleaned another school at night. We had the misguided practice of using a bleach-like product when cleaning the floors. We've long since banned bleach anywhere, but at the time it was part of our process. He put bleach into a mop bucket and mopped. He didn't fully finish when he had a family emergency and fully intended to return. We didn't know he left early until we got a call early in the morning from the school. They said a strong bleach smell wafted throughout the school and it was traced to the bucket. Some of the occupants complained of teary eyes. So they requested the SDS. As with all of our locations, they found it before we emailed it and it was in the janitorial closet. They removed the bucket and dumped it and the smell dissipated before school started. Crisis averted.

Your job as the cleaning company is to keep a SDS binder filled with sheets on all of your products. We keep a binder and we have a photo of the product along with the sheets so it makes referencing it a bit easier. We also keep emails saved of these products in a folder in our email program. It's broken down by client location. So if something did happen, we have immediate access and we can email as needed. And once per year we'll audit our janitorial closets and the products used to make sure a product didn't slip in.

It's our job as cleaners to protect our employees, our clients, their staff and their guests. Knowing what to use and how to use it properly is on us.

In the following blog post, I will dive into the details on how to use a SDS sheet.

If wanting to read the legalese, check out Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) (29 CFR 1910.1200(g)).