The moral of this story, as we do in Emergency Response, is NEVER to rely on a single data source for critical safety information about the chemicals we work with. In ER, we are REQUIRED to use at least three (3) recognized data sources when developing our response plan and making decisions. SDSs can have errors and are typically poorly written, to the point that they don’t meet our needs during an emergency response.
We recently performed a 3-year PSM/RMP audit for a new client. We received many challenges from this client, as they were not pleased with what we were finding. One of these challenges regarded the IDLH of NH3, which is 300 ppm. Throughout their programs, and most notably in their Emergency Response Plan (ERP) and Emergency Action Plan (EAP), they claimed the IDLH was 35 ppm. Now this is MORE SAFE than the actual 300 ppm, but this facility was lacking any formal safety leadership, and most could not state what the IDLH acronym stood for or how it was defined. So we made a note of it – NOT a finding since it was MORE SAFE than the 300 ppm and they lost their minds. They were 100% confident we were wrong with the 300 ppm and showed us their data source, one of the nation’s leading distributors of NH3. This is what they presented to us…
NOTE: I have contacted the distributor about their website error.