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Manual of Style
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The majority of compounds are described by a long list of potential hazards as well as R&S phrases. Even innocuous chemicals such as sodium chloride have risk and safety phrases: Template:R36, Template:S26, Template:S36 in their MSDSs. Wikipedia does not aspire to be an MSDS. The hazards associated with a chemical compound should ordinarily be described in the Chembox (via EUClass, NFPA, or MainHazard parameters; further elaborated in R and S phrases). The information in the Chembox is sufficient for most compounds. News reports of routine accidents, even though they may be tragic, are usually not relevant.

Ordinarily, the safety section should be brief. Editors recognize that all chemical compounds could be abused and can be dangerous under diverse circumstances. In cases where the mechanism of toxicity is noteworthy, e.g. the inhibition of myoglobin by carbon monoxide, a separate section within the article is often desirable. In a few cases where the literature and lore on toxicity is extensive, such as cyanide, an entire separate article is warranted, e.g. cyanide poisoning.

Three main rules:

  • If the hazards are relatively obvious (e.g. hexafluorophosphoric acid is a strong acid, and should not be stored with bases and reactive metals) do not create a separate sub-section here.
  • The description of hazards should avoid speculation. This is partly an extension of Wikipedia NPOV policy, but not entirely. There is no need to include a section which merely states "all chemical compounds should be treated with the utmost precaution": such a section tells the reader nothing. If there are no known (or reasonably suspected) hazards, there is nothing for Wikipedia to say.
  • The description of hazards should avoid hyperbole and anecdotal events. The role of Wikipedia is to give balanced and accurate information, to allow its readers to reach their own conclusions. Hazards should be peer reviewed, and not taken from tabloid accounts. If it is felt that an event is sufficiently significant to warrant inclusion as a safety hazard, post it to the discussion page and discuss it with the Wikipedia community.

Descriptions of hazards should, as far as possible, be based on published, peer-reviewed sources (which should, of course, be cited at the appropriate point in the article). A list of resources for chemical safety information is given in the external links section of these guidelines.

Toxicology

Depending on the extent of the information, this content may be incorporated into the Safety section or it may be a separate section on its own. If the compound is a drug, follow WikiProject Pharmacology's recommendations.

As indicated by What Wikipedia is not, editors are discouraged from providing advice about poisons or emergencies associated with chemical compounds: "a Wikipedia article should not read like a how-to style manual of instructions, advice (legal, medical, or otherwise) or suggestions."

Sources of safety information

Secondary sources (UN agencies)

International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS)

The IPCS is a joint programme of three United Nations specialized agencies (WHO, ILO, UNEP) with the collaboration of many other national and international bodies. It publishes several series of documents which may be of use here: these are peer-reviewed reviews, but are often long and technical. The three main ones are

Other IPCS publications which might be of use in specific circumstances include:

International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/CIRC)

The IARC (CIRC in its French acronym) is an agency of the World Health Organization based in Lyon, France. It publishes a series of Monographs on carcinogenic risks to humans which are very widely used around the world. Summary evaluations are available for all chemicals which have been classified as carcinogens by the IARC, and in some cases the full text of the monograph is available free of charge. These are a preferred source when discussing human carcinogenicity.

International Chemical Safety Cards (ICSCs)

These are also published by the IPCS, but are much shorter than other IPCS publications (two pages!) and intended for a non-technical audience. They do not include citations to the original literature, but are peer-reviewed. They are particularly useful for providing basic chemical information (in the absence of a more specific source), and in providing NFPA-ratings which have been peer-reviewed (otherwise difficult to find).

Secondary sources (EU and national)

European Union

European Chemicals Bureau (ECB)

Although the ECB has now been absorbed into the Institute for Health and Consumer Protection and its regulatory functions taken over by the ECHA, its site still contains two very useful databases of safety information related to the Dangerous Substances Directive (67/548/EEC) and other EU laws. ESIS contains data on all substances with an EC number, with links to IUCLID data: unfortunately, its data on classification and labelling is incomplete. Class-Lab allows full searching of Annex 1 of the Dangerous Substances Directive (click on "Search Annex 1").

European Chemicals Agency (ECHA)

The ECHA has only recently started operating, but is likely to become the main site for EU-related chemical safety in the not-too-distant future (as of March 2009). Full GHS assessments of the 140,000 chemicals in the European market are expected to be available by late 2010.

European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA)

The EU-OSHA site contains information of a more general nature about the use of chemicals in the workplace.

United States

Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

The OSHA is the federal agency charged with occupational safety and health regulations. Its Safety and Health Topics site provides several useful links. Permissible Exposure Limits (PELs) [4] are the legally enforceable standards for workplace contamination in the U.S.

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

NIOSH is a federal agency concerned more with research and training rather than with regulation. Its Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards is a widely used summary of basic safety information, but mostly redundant to ICSCs (see above). IDLH values (for "Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health", available here) are a useful response to the common question "how much of this chemical will kill me?"

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The EPA is mostly concerned with pesticides and environmental polluants, information on which can be found through the Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances site. Its Acute Exposure Guidance Levels (AEGLs) give one response to questions about "safe" levels of chemicals for the general population (rather than in workplace situations).

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

The FDA is the source for U.S.-related information about food and cosmetics questions. Its EAFUS database ("Everything Added to Food in the United States") is a particularly useful starting point to find information.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

The CDC promote public health in general, and most of their work on occupational health is conducted through NIOSH. However, their Emergency Preparedness & Response site is a useful secondary source of information on some more exotic compounds, such as chemical weapons, for which little reliable information is available elsewhere.

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)

The ATSDR is a federal agency which publishes Toxicological Profiles on just over 300 substances. This are fairly long and technical, and often redundant to CICADs or similar documents.

National Toxicology Program

The National Toxicology Program of the Department of Health and Human Services publishes a regular Report on Carcinogens: the most recent available version is the 11th ed. The IARC Monographs (see above) are preferred as a source for carcinogenicity information, as they cover more substances in greater depth, but the NTP report is also reliable. The report also links to many other federal regulations concerning the substances listed.

United Kingdom

Health and Safety Executive (HSE)

The HSE is responsible for promotion and enforcement of health and safety regulations in the UK. This page provides a variety of general publications about various chemical hazards.

Canada

Much of the regulation of occupation exposure to chemical substances in Canada is of provincial competence. There is a federal classification system, the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS), which can be searched here at the site of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS). The Health Canada WHMIS site also provides a small amount of information on "Substance-Specific Issues". The CEPA Environmental Registry of Environment Canada list substances which are regulated under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act of 1999 (CEPA 1999).

Australia

New Zealand

Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA)

France

Japan

National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (NITE)

Secondary sources (encyclopedias)

The standard reference work for chemical safety, other than the sites and monographs given above, is Sax's Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials, currently on its 11th edition (2004, 4860 pages). It is available in most university libraries and in many large public libraries, and some universities have local access to a CD-ROM version. In citing Sax's, it is not necessary that the most up-to-date edition is used, although that is obviously preferable if you have access to it.

  • Lewis, Richard J., ed. (2004), Sax's Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials (11th ed.), London: Wiley, ISBN 0471476625

The monographs of the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) in establishing Threshold Limit Values (TLVs) have not been widely used as a source on Wikipedia, as they are not accessible to most editors: however, they are widely cited by other secondary sources in the field and so would constitute a reliable secondary source if need be. Note that TLVs are not legally enforceable in the United States, although they have been cited in civil law suits as an example of industry best practice.

Primary sources

Editors are strongly discouraged from using the primary literature (eg journal articles) as sources for chemical safety information.

Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs)

Commercial Material Safety Data Sheets present several problems as sources: these problems are shared by the various collections of MSDSs kept and compiled by university chemistry departments and by data retreived from IUCLID.

  • They are not peer-reviewed. Although they are usually competently complied, peer-reviewed sources are always better.
  • There are noticeable differences between the MSDSs of different companies. In particular, MSDSs written for distribution in the United States are noticeably harsher on the perceived hazards of a given chemical than those written from distribution in Europe (this almost certainly stems from the different legal frameworks for these documents). Which version should we choose as our source?
  • They are commercial documents, usually held on the supplier's website: why should we favour one supplier over another in linking to their sites?

As a counterbalance to these problems, MSDSs or IUCLID are often the only available source of safety information for a particular chemical: indeed, they may be the only available source of basic chemical data such as melting points. If that is the case, a separate safety section is inappropriate. However the relevant summary data may be included in the chembox, with the MSDS as a reference or included in the ExternalMSDS field (label the link as "External MSDS", not with the company name).

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