Chemical

Definition

A substance or a mixture that you can use within your company.

Use

Chemicals, such as acetone or cleaning solutions, can be used within your company and workers may be exposed to these chemicals while performing their work. Some chemicals may have an adverse effect to people or the environment and may cause physical and health hazards. To protect your workers from harm, chemicals should be assessed and approved before employees can use them.

You can use SAP EHS Management to provide an approval process that ensures that chemicals introduced to your company are evaluated and approved by hazardous substance managers and industrial hygienists.

When you use the approval process, chemicals that you want to use within your company have to be requested. The person responsible for the assessment of hazardous chemicals starts a chemical approval process to determine whether a chemical can be used in a company at a specific location with a specific method of use. This decision is based on an evaluation of the physical and health hazards associated with use and handling of this chemical. In the approval process, the methods of use and the quantities used are also taken into account, as well as controls that are currently in place at the location.

To be able to evaluate the hazards of a chemical, you need to get more information about it. For chemicals that are subject to regulations, such as (EC) No 1907/2006 (REACH) or the Global Harmonized System (GHS), labels indicate possible hazards, and safety data sheets (SDS) inform workers and emergency personnel about procedures for handling or working with the chemical in a safe manner. Safety data sheets include information about physical and chemical data, health effects, first aid measures, storage conditions, protective equipment, and spill-handling procedures. They serve as a reference source for exposed employees, industrial hygienists, safety professionals, emergency responders, health care professionals, and other interested parties.

During the chemical approval process, the assessed chemical is created and information provided on safety data sheets can be entered for the chemical. The entered information is needed for the approval process. In addition, the information can be used later on in the risk assessment process to identify and evaluate risks, or to create documents, such as safety instructions, that are used to inform employees about all health, safety, and personal protection relevant aspects of the chemicals they use.

More Information

For more information about how chemicals can be managed for health and safety processes, see Management of Chemicals for Health & Safety Processes:

For more technical information about chemicals, see the business object documentation for Chemical.

If you want to transfer real substances from the specification database of SAP EHS Management as part of SAP ERP to the chemical agents that you use in risk assessment, see Transferring Data from the Specification Database.