NoteSpoke & Stringer is no longer a trading café brand. The cafés closed in 2024. This site is the operating lessons that came out of fifteen years running them. Read the story

Safety data sheets, translated.

By Kristian

Why this matters

COSHH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health) is a real legal duty for anyone running a kitchen. You have to know what chemicals you use, where they live, how staff should handle them, and what to do if someone spills one on their hand at midnight.

The information for all of this is in the SDS that comes with the product. The problem is the SDS is 16 sections, most of them irrelevant to a café, written in dense compliance language. We had a folder of them at Harbourside and nobody on the team had ever read one cover to cover. Not great if a hand goes in the sanitiser at 7pm on a Friday.

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How to read your results

The tool returns a one-page summary of the SDS you uploaded, with the sections that actually matter for kitchen use:

  • Hazards. What this stuff can do to skin, eyes, lungs.
  • First aid. What to do if it goes somewhere it should not.
  • Handling. Gloves, ventilation, dilution.
  • Storage. Where it can live, what it cannot live next to.
  • Spillage. What to do if a bottle goes over.

What you do with this: print it, stick it next to where the chemical is stored, train staff on it. Then file the original SDS in a folder near the dry store. EHO will ask to see both.

FAQs

Do I legally need an SDS for every chemical in the kitchen?
Yes, under COSHH regulations and the CLP Regulation, suppliers must provide a Safety Data Sheet for any hazardous substance, and you must keep them accessible to staff who use the product.
How often does an SDS need updating?
Whenever the manufacturer changes the product formulation, but at minimum every five years. If you are still working from an SDS dated 2017 and the bottle has been reformulated, that is a finding.
Who needs to read the SDS?
Anyone who uses the chemical. The point of COSHH is that the people doing the work understand the risk. SDSs locked in the manager office do not pass an inspection.