New digital tool in place for SDS

The laws regarding Safety Data Sheets (SDS) are getting more and more complex and the content of the Safety Data Sheets needs to be adapted to the country the chemical formulation is sold to. A decade ago, only Europe, the US and Japan had regulations on chemicals safety, but today more than 50 countries have laws on the classification and labelling of chemicals, or are currently in the process of implementing them.

In this situation of exponentially growing complexity, the use of artificial intelligence is a proper tool to safeguard the completeness and correctness of the documents, and as a consequence TFL has transferred SDS management to a new, digitalized tool.

The identity of all raw materials and blending components is fed into a central database, including impurity levels down to the milligram range. Should a reaction occur during manufacturing, a team of experienced chemists defines the results in detail and files it in the same database. The input-side is then completed with information on the physical, chemical and toxicological properties of the listed substances, which are uploaded from a globally leading content provider on chemicals safety. As a company with European roots, most of the substances used by TFL are registered under European REACH, and those data have been verified by the European Chemicals Agency. This is the point where artificial intelligence takes over. Following a complex set of expert rules, the computer evaluates the data for every commercial product and generates a safety data sheet according to national regulations and in a language that is accepted for business purpose in the respective country. The result is filed in the SDS format requested by the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) with its sixteen chapters, and double-checked by the Product Safety team at TFL. In this way, currently more than fifty SDS are generated per commercial product and exported to the TFL SDS database, to which every employee has access. Customers access can be granted after registration as an additional service to the SDS that are accompanying shipments.

TFL is confident that in this way we can support our customers globally, putting them in the best position to use TFL chemical formulations for the manufacture of leather in an efficient way that is safe for workers, consumers and the environment. Today and in the future.