Free tool · selection with a written reason
Which precautionary statements does your label need?
Give it a classification and it works through CLP Annex IV, ECHA’s importance scale and Article 28 to a set that fits a label — then shows you the rule and the source behind every statement it kept and every one it dropped. Including the places where the reason is our judgement rather than the regulation.
01 · The tool
Start from a classification
Nothing is stored and nothing is sent anywhere — the selection runs in your browser against a snapshot of the regulation data built into this page.
1 · Classification
Either pull a harmonised classification from CLP Annex VI — by name or by CAS number — or tick the hazard statements for your own mixture below.
Signal word
Used to disambiguate hazard codes that read as more than one category — H240, H241, H242, H250 and H280 are the five where the resulting set of statements actually differs.
Hazard statements
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2 · Who gets it, and in what
Supplied to
This changes the answer, not just the wording. Supplying the general public makes a disposal statement compulsory under Art. 28(2), brings in the “Consumer products” section of Annex IV, and moves ECHA’s importance levels to their own column.
Package capacity
Only used to check the small-package derogations of Annex I §1.5.2 — at 125 mL and below, some classes let you leave statements off the label altogether.
Nothing to select from yet
Look up a CAS number or tick the hazard statements on the left. The tool reads the hazard classes out of them, then works through Annex IV, ECHA’s importance scale and Article 28 — showing its reasoning for every statement it keeps and every one it drops.
02 · How to use it
Four steps, and the fourth is the point
The first three get you an answer. The fourth is how you check it — and on a safety label, an unchecked answer is worth less than no answer at all.
- 01
Give it a classification
A CAS number pulls the harmonised classification straight from CLP Annex VI. If you are labelling your own mixture — and most people are, since a mixture is never in Annex VI — tick the hazard statements instead. Signal word matters for five codes only (H240, H241, H242, H250, H280), and the tool says so rather than demanding it everywhere.
- 02
Say who receives it and in what
Supplying the general public is not a formatting choice: it makes a disposal statement compulsory under Art. 28(2), brings in the “Consumer products” section of Annex IV, and switches ECHA’s importance levels to a different column. Package capacity is used only to check the small-package derogations of Annex I §1.5.2 — at 125 mL and below some classes let you leave statements off entirely.
- 03
Read the set — and the limit that shaped it
Article 28(3) caps the label at six statements “unless necessary to reflect the nature and the severity of the hazards”. The tool shows which constraint produced the number you got. Combined statements such as P305+P351+P338 count as one and are never split — a half of a combined statement is a sentence that does not exist in CLP.
- 04
Open “Why” on every line before you print
This is the step that makes the tool worth using. Each statement carries the rule that put it there and the source it came from — and where the reason is our judgement rather than the regulation, it says so in those words. P102 “Keep out of reach of children” is pinned on consumer labels by our decision, not by CLP, and the reasoning line tells you that and tells you it can be unpinned.
03 · What this tool will not claim
The limits, stated up front
- Does this give me a legally correct set of statements?
- No tool can, and any tool that claims to is overselling. ECHA states it plainly in its own guidance: “Neither the UN GHS nor the CLP Regulation provides for clear-cut rules on how to select precautionary statements for the label” (Guidance on Labelling and Packaging, v4.2, §7.1). What this tool offers instead is a reproducible method and a written reason for every line, so a competent person can check the working rather than trust the output.
- Where do the rules come from?
- Four sources, in this order. CLP Annex IV says which statements belong to which hazard class, and its column 5 says when one can be omitted because another is present. Article 28 sets the ceiling of six and makes a disposal statement compulsory for the general public. ECHA’s guidance §7.2–7.3 supplies the importance scale — mandatory, highly recommended, recommended, optional — and the rule that a combined statement counts as one. Annex I §1.5.2 grants the small-package derogations. That is 986 matrix rows and 422 graded recommendations behind the answer.
- What happens to the statements it drops?
- They go into the safety data sheet, not into the bin. That is ECHA’s own instruction: “The de-selected statements can be introduced under the relevant headings of the SDS.” The label is the short form; the SDS is the full one. Open the “Not on the label” panel to see each dropped statement with the rule that dropped it.
- Why does the number of statements sometimes drop below six?
- Because the label ran out of room, and Art. 17(2) requires the same information in every language on it. Six statements in English and four in Greek is not a label with a small compromise — it is a non-compliant label. So the measurement is taken on the tightest language first, and the limit becomes the smaller of six and what actually fits.
04 · Where to go next