Austria SDS Authoring

Austria is a member of the European Union and as such is bound by EU regulations. For pure substances, Austrian labels must be compliant with the EU’s GHS based CLP-regulation No. 1272/2008 – labels created to be compliant with Directive 67/548/EEC have expired. For mixtures, labels can be compliant with either 1272/2008 or with the previous Directive 1999/45/EC.

Austria is fully compliant with EU chemical regulations, for more information see Austrian Chemicals Act 1996 (Chemikaliengesetz (ChemG 1996), BGBl. I Nr. 53/1997). For more information please visit the Austrian site on Dangerous Substances.

The EU has fully adopted GHS under their CLP Regulation (Regulation on classification, labeling and packaging of substances and mixtures). The deadline for having new SDSs has passed for pure substances – it was November 30, 2010. The deadline for mixtures was May 31, 2015. Not all the building blocks in the United Nations’ Purple Book were adopted by the EU CLP regulation. Furthermore, the EU has adopted the EU No 453/2010 format for SDSs, which goes well beyond what was recommended in the Purple Book.

It is relatively straightforward to have a single MSDS for use among the countries of the European Union and European Free Trade Association, so long as it is in the necessary languages. Countries other than Austria in the EU and EFTA where German is an official language include Belgium, Germany and Liechtenstein. Having a single document for use in the United States and the European Union should be avoided due to significant differences between the two systems.