Canada's way of making sure the information reaches the person
WHMIS is the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. CCOHS describes it as a comprehensive system for providing health and safety information on hazardous products intended for use, handling or storage in Canadian workplaces.
The important word is system. WHMIS is not a document, a course or a certificate, although all three exist inside it. It is an arrangement in which each party has to hand something on to the next, and it fails wherever one link stops.
Four components, and each one depends on the one before
- Classification. Working out what hazards a product actually has. Everything downstream is decided here, because you cannot label or describe a hazard nobody identified.
- Labels. The warning on the container itself, which is the only part present at the moment somebody picks the thing up.
- Safety data sheets. The detailed reference behind the label, in a fixed format so the same information is always in the same place.
- Education and training. How any of it gets into the head of the person doing the work.
The duty runs in a chain
Education and training are two different things, and only one can be bought
This is the part that gets missed, and it gets missed by people who believe they have finished.
Education is general and portable: how WHMIS works, what the hazard classes and pictograms mean, how to read a label and a data sheet. That travels with the worker, and a course delivers it perfectly well.
Training is site and job specific: where your products are stored, how they are handled here, what your spill procedure is, what happens in an emergency in this building. No external provider can deliver that, because it is about your workplace.
So a WHMIS certificate is real and it is evidence of the first half only. An employer whose programme consists of buying a course has done the portable part and left the part that is actually about their own hazards.
WHMIS, GHS, and why the data sheet looks familiar
GHS is the international scheme, the Globally Harmonized System, and WHMIS is Canada's implementation of it. The alignment brought more comprehensive classification criteria, new hazard classes, consistency with the transport of dangerous goods rules, and standardised wording and formatting.
The consequence is convenient: because the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Australia have all aligned to the same scheme, a safety data sheet from any of them has the same structure. The duties around it differ by country. The document does not.
Reading the data sheet you have been handed
A data sheet is only useful if it is complete and current, and both fail quietly. The WHMIS safety data sheet checker works through the fixed structure a sheet is supposed to have and covers the rule about how recent it needs to be, which is the thing most often out of date in a folder nobody has opened.
For the assessment side, the hazards on that sheet have to end up in the work itself. Hazard assessment is the Canadian document for that, and COSHH is the British equivalent system, which is worth a look if you are working across both because it assesses the work rather than the product.
Common questions
What does WHMIS stand for?
Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System. CCOHS describes it as a comprehensive system for providing health and safety information on hazardous products intended for use, handling or storage in Canadian workplaces. It is the Canadian national approach to making sure that anybody who has to work with a hazardous product can find out what it is and what it will do to them, and it works through a fixed set of components rather than through any single document.
What are the parts of WHMIS?
CCOHS lists them as hazard identification and product classification, labelling, safety data sheets, and worker education and training. Classification decides what the hazards are and therefore what everything else has to say. Labels are the immediate warning on the container. The safety data sheet is the detailed reference behind the label. Education and training are how any of that reaches the person actually doing the work, and that last one is the part most often left half done.
Is a WHMIS certificate from a course enough?
It covers one half and it cannot cover the other, which is the single most useful thing to understand about the system. CCOHS separates education, which is general and portable knowledge about how WHMIS works and what the hazard classes mean, from training, which is site and job specific: your storage arrangements, your handling procedures, what you do about a spill in your building. A course can deliver the first anywhere. Nobody outside your workplace can deliver the second, so an employer who bought a course and stopped there has done part of the duty.
Who is responsible for what?
It runs in a chain. Suppliers classify their product, and provide the label and the safety data sheet. Employers educate and train workers, keep current safety data sheets available, make sure containers in the workplace are labelled, and put control measures in place. Workers take part in the education and training, and act to protect themselves and the people around them. Each link depends on the one before it, which is why a missing data sheet from a supplier stops an employer from discharging their part.
What is the difference between WHMIS and GHS?
GHS is the international scheme and WHMIS is the Canadian implementation of it. Canada aligned WHMIS with the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, which brought more comprehensive classification criteria, new hazard classes, consistency with the transport of dangerous goods rules, and standardised wording and data sheet formatting. The practical effect is that a data sheet from a Canadian supplier has the same shape as one from an American or European supplier.
Does WHMIS cover everything in the workplace?
No, and assuming it does is a common gap. It applies to hazardous products supplied for use in workplaces, and several categories are handled by other legislation instead, including consumer products in consumer packaging, explosives, cosmetics and drugs, food, pest control products and nuclear substances. Those are not unregulated, they are regulated somewhere else, so the absence of a WHMIS label is not evidence that something is harmless.