Page Revised October 2007

The HSC have agreed changes to the list of WELs which became applicable from 1st October 2007.

The revised list can be found at http://www.hse.gov.uk/coshh/table1.pdf .

Note: Until 2005 it had been normal for HSE to publish a new edition of EH40, or at least an amendment, each year. However with increasing use of the website facilities the HSE no longer always publishes a revised hardcopy edition, or amendment.

In 2006 HSE produce an addendum to the 2005 list, a hard copy of which was posted to all known recipients of the 2005 publication. Those changes have been incorporated in the above list .

In mid 2007 further amendments to some values were agreed, and these have been incorporated in the Table 1 (link above) and should have been sent to all prior purchasers.  These amended entries came into force on 1 October 2007.  

Confusingly the web based Table 1 remains headed “EH40/2005 Workplace exposure limits”, with nothing at the start of the list to indicate that it was updated in 2006 and 2007.

The hard copy edition of EH40 which was published in 2005 (EH40/2005) unfortunately resulted in the loss of some very useful information.

The data lost from the 2005 edition of EH40 can be summarised as follows:

1. The column in which the references to European Community Workplace Exposure Limits (IOELVs and ILVs) were annotated;
2. The CAS number index.

The first gives problems for SDS writers as now reference will need to be made to the official European lists in order to determine whether an ingredient within a product needs to be listed in Section 2 of the SDS for the reason of having a Community workplace exposure limit. Remember it is only the EC-set values that are relevant here, not the local country lists.

The EU have published two lists of IOELV values, the second of which changed 18 earlier entries as well as introducing 11 new limits.

So, as a service to those writing SDSs, CHCS is making available the following documents as down-loadable PDF files.

• IOELV & ILV table
• CAS number index

The first of these files is provided courtesy of Stuart Longworth (Sankey Safety Consultants) and is only available in the Members Area, whilst the latter file was provided courtesy of HSE.

Details of the Community Exposure Limits can be found in the following Directives:

The Official Journal Website address is:

• http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/index.htm

From there you can either get direct access to the current issues by clicking on “Official Journal” or carry out a search on earlier issues by clicking on “Simple Search”.