Viewing and Working with Chemicals

Note: This feature requires the Chemical Inventory module licensed at your site.

While SDSs and parts represent products and lots represent individual product units or containers, chemicals represent individual chemical substances, which often correspond to the ingredients in your products. Chemical records enable you to enter and view a wide variety of data on each individual substance: hazard classifications, user-defined data, attachments, and more. Because a chemical's properties may vary according to its formulation, its concentration within a product, or other conditions, you can create and maintain multiple records of a single substance to ensure complete data for each of its variations.

Unlike SDSs, parts, and lots, all chemicals are global. When a chemical is created in your system, it is automatically visible at all sites where the Chemical Inventory module is licensed. Any non-local changes made to that chemical—from any site—are also immediately visible at other sites. This enables all sites to contribute to and benefit from a complete, corporation-wide database of chemical information.

Note: If any site has both the Chemical Inventory and Tier II Regulatory Reporting modules licensed, this site automatically creates many of the chemicals commonly referenced in Tier II reporting, thus making them available to all other sites with the Chemical Inventory module licensed.

Searching for Chemicals

When searching your system for a specific chemical, see Searching for Chemicals for details on the searching tools available to you.

When you find the chemical you seek and open it, this opens the Chemical Home page. See below for details on this page and the features it offers.

The Chemical Home page

The Chemical Home page is the first page you see when you open a chemical. This page shows a general overview of the chemical and serves as a hub where you can access every aspect of the chemical's associated data. This page includes the following sections:

● Identification: The blue top bar shows the chemical’s CAS number, name, and contribution restriction (that is, the proportion of a product’s makeup that this chemical contributes as an ingredient). Because different contribution amounts of the same chemical compound might have different physical and hazard data, a single chemical compound might have multiple chemical records for its different contribution amounts.

● Physical Properties: The beige left-hand section shows the chemical’s recorded specific gravity, density, vapor density, VOC, flash point, physical state, and shelf life. For details on editing these properties, see Chemical Physical Properties.

● Synonyms: The beige left-hand section also shows the chemical's alternate names. Synonyms entered by a Corporate user (and therefore visible at all sites) are shown in blue; site-specific synonyms entered at your local site are shown in black. For details on managing a chemical's synonyms, see Chemical Synonyms.

● Additional Details: This section shows the following:

● The chemical’s hazard ratings (shown in NFPA, HMIS, and/or HMIS III pictograms (depending on administrative settings; see Hiding/Showing Hazard Ratings) and hazard classifications, which can include additional pictograms, codes, and other indicators of specific hazards or safety practices. These are selected on the chemical’s Hazards page. Here you can:

● Mouse-over a hazard classification for more details.

● Click the More… link to read full details on every hazard rating and classification appearing on the page.

Note: If any assigned hazard classification is missing a required user entry, it shows a warning () icon. When you click More..., the classification with the missing entry is displayed in red. For details on correcting a missing hazard classification entry, see Editing Chemical Hazard Classifications.

● The chemical’s various types of indexed data, each of which is discussed in the topics listed below. To open and view any of these chemical data types, click its expand () icon.

● Chemical Toolbar: This toolbar shows icons that let you perform operations with the chemical as a whole, such as adding it to a collection or deleting it from your system. These functions are also listed below.

● List Matching: Below the toolbar are shown all of the chemical lists defined in your system (see Administration: Chemical Lists) that cite this chemical. For details on a listing, click its [notes] link.

Chemical Features and Functions

See the following topics for details on finding, creating, viewing, and working with an individual chemical:

● Searching for Chemicals: Search your database of lots and open the desired one.

● Creating Chemicals: Create a new chemical for your database.

● Chemical Details: View and edit a chemical's identifying information and other basic properties.

● Chemical Attachments: View and manage the supplementary documents attached to a chemical.

● Chemical Synonyms: View and edit the alternate names used by a chemical.

● Chemical Physical Properties: View and edit the physical properties (such as specific gravity, density, physical state, and so on) of a chemical.

● Chemical Hazards: View and edit the hazard ratings and classifications assigned to a chemical from a variety of regulatory standards.

● Chemical User-Defined Data: View and edit any additional chemical data not covered in the standard Comply Plus data areas.

● Chemical Inventory Records and Activities: View the products in which a chemical is an ingredient, the criteria that match the chemical to these product ingredients, the chemical's current amounts in inventory, and the limits defined for these amounts.

● Adding a Chemical to a Collection: Add a chemical to a collection of other chemicals for easy reference and group data operations. (For details, see Collections.)

● Deleting Chemicals: Permanently delete an unwanted chemical record from your system.