Chemical inventory management: The key to controlling hazardous materials

Federal, state, and other agencies issue authoritative instruments for the purpose of establishing and applying sound business management principles. These external instruments are used to establish management objectives and expectations (requirements), and assign responsibilities. The requirements from these external instruments are numerous, subject to interpretation, and not easily applied by workers. In the field of chemistry, being burdened with ensuring that these safety requirements are being met can quickly become an exercise in complexity. By using effective chemical inventory management, many of these requirements are met. A well-managed inventory system can address Hazard Identification, Storage Incompatibility, Hazard Minimization, and Flammable Liquid concerns before they become issues. In this paper, the need of an inventory of chemicals stored in a particular location is articulated, the use of commercially available chemical inventory software programs and their accompanying databases to seamlessly meet hazardous material issues are demonstrated, and an approach to get buy-in from chemical workers to maintain the chemical inventory is presented.