Managing Hazardous Chemicals and Dangerous Goods on Site

About this course.

A hazardous chemical is any substance, mixture or article that can harm health or safety, classified against the criteria of the Globally Harmonised System (GHS). Dangerous goods are substances and articles with immediate physical hazards — such as flammability, reactivity, corrosivity or the ability to explode — classified for transport under the Australian Dangerous Goods framework. The two categories overlap heavily but are not identical: a product can be a hazardous chemical, a dangerous good, or both. They matter on site because construction uses a vast range of chemical products daily, and both acute injuries and long-term illness are foreseeable, preventable consequences of managing them poorly.

It helps to separate the two ways a chemical can cause harm. Health hazards are properties that make a chemical harmful to the human body — it may be toxic, corrosive to skin or eyes, a respiratory or skin sensitiser, a carcinogen, mutagen or reproductive toxicant, or harmful to specific organs after single or repeated exposure. Health effects can be acute (appearing quickly, such as a chemical burn, dizziness from solvent vapour, or an asthma attack) or chronic (developing slowly over months or years, such as occupational asthma, dermatitis, nerve damage or cancer). Chronic effects are especially insidious because the exposure that causes them often produces no immediate discomfort, so workers do not realise they are being harmed until the damage is done.