EU Project:
One of Every Three Safety Data Sheets Is Not Legally Compliant

Inspections as part of the EU REACH En-Force 11 (REF-11) project revealed that 35% of the safety data sheets (SDS) reviewed were not compliant with the law. The final project report summarizing the results was published by ECHA in December 2024 and accompanied by a press release.

What was checked

Inspectors in 28 EU and EEA countries checked a total of more than 2,500 SDSs for completeness and correctness in 2023. They focused on the requirements arising from the changes in Annex II of REACH. The Regulation (EU Regulation 2020/878) requires companies to:

Provide specific information for substances with nanoforms in the SDS
Provide information for substances and mixtures with endocrine-disrupting properties in the SDS
Align certain content in the SDS (mainly in sections 9 and 14) with the UN-GHS (Rev. 6 and 7)

Penalization of misconduct

In each country, national authorities are responsible for ensuring compliance with the regulations. They are required to take enforcement action if a company violates the law. The measures taken here were mostly written recommendations. However, more serious offenses were penalized with administrative orders and fines, and criminal charges were even filed in some cases.

Importance of SDS

Companies that place hazardous substances or mixtures on the market must inform users about their hazards and risks by providing SDS. They are also obliged to keep these documents up to date.

We create SDSs in more than 50 languages. As the data requirements for SDSs are constantly increasing, we ensure the completeness of your data and take over the complete data management for your supplier SDS as part of our "KFT Control & Care" convenience package.