GHS Label Requirements and Specific Symbol Rules

By: Kirsten Alcock, Principal Product Safety Consultant, email

Something that came to my attention today that I thought I’d share is that there are the Specific Rules for Symbols under the Hazardous Products Regulations (HPR). It is something that comes up every now and again and even I need a reminder sometimes.

Under the Hazardous Products Regulations, Part 3, Labelling, is information on specific rules pertaining to symbols and their requirements on the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) and Canadian Label.

If you have an authoring system that you use, this may already be coded into your system but if not, it is definitely something you want to be aware of. Below is a snapshot from the regulations regarding this requirement under the HPR:

If we look at (a) for example, a product that would be considered an oral hazard category 1 in accordance with the HPR has the requirement for skull and crossbones but would not require the exclamation mark if the product as a whole was also considered a dermal hazard category 4.

This specific rule is saying that only your skull and crossbones is required.

As a reminder, the symbols/pictograms can be found in the Hazardous Products Regulations.

Note that there may be other skull and crossbones pictures floating around out there on the web, but you MUST use these ones for Canada GHS Labels.

The Toxic symbol for GHS (workplace) may appear to be similar to the CCCR (Consumer realm) symbol in Canada, but please use the appropriate symbol for the appropriate realm.

WORKPLACE TOXIC:

CCCR TOXIC:

For further information on GHS requirements in Canada or the US,  please contact me.

Dell Tech
Kirsten Alcock, B.Sc. (Hons) 
Principal Product Safety Consultant
519-858-5074
kirsten@delltech.com

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