What is COSHH in cleaning?
COSHH is the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, which require employers to assess the risks from hazardous substances and control exposure. In cleaning it applies to the chemicals used every day.
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<img src="https://cleanoptix.co.uk/glossary/coshh/diagram.svg" alt="COSHH — diagram from CleanOptix" width="880" height="620" loading="lazy">
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<a href="https://cleanoptix.co.uk/glossary/coshh">What is COSHH in cleaning?</a> — diagram by
<a href="https://cleanoptix.co.uk">CleanOptix</a>
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</figure>A safety data sheet is not a COSHH assessment. The sheet describes the product; the assessment describes this use of it, in this building, by these people — the dilution, the ventilation, the equipment worn and what happens if it is spilled.
Cleaning chemicals are familiar, which is precisely why they are treated casually. The routine harms are decanting into unlabelled bottles, mixing products, and skin exposure over years rather than a single dramatic incident.
The assessment has to reach the person using the product. An assessment held in a folder at head office controls nothing on a site fifty miles away.
In practice
A folder of safety data sheets in the cleaners' store.
It is complete, current and indexed. The site has no COSHH assessment at all, because everybody believed the folder was one.
A data sheet is the manufacturer's information about a product. An assessment is what that product means for these people doing this task in this room — and the same bleach is a different assessment in a ventilated kitchen and a windowless toilet block.
The folder is necessary and it is the input, not the output.
What goes wrong in practice
- Safety data sheets filed as though they were assessments.
- Chemicals decanted into unlabelled bottles, removing the hazard information at the point of use.
- Products mixed, which is how the most serious cleaning chemical incidents happen.
- Assessments not updated when a product was substituted for a cheaper equivalent.