Reference · SDS format
The 16 sections of a safety data sheet
The headings are identical worldwide — the content behind them is not. Every section below, with what the EU and the US each require under it, and where to look for one specific item.
01 · The format
All 16 sections, in order
The section count and the order come from Annex 4 of the UN GHS. They are transposed into EU law by REACH Annex II — as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/878 — and into US law by OSHA at 29 CFR 1910.1200 Appendix D.
| § | Heading | What it answers | OSHA |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Identification Rapid response | Who made the product, what it is called, what it may and may not be used for, and the emergency telephone number. | Mandatory |
| 2 | Hazards identification Rapid response | How the product is classified, and the exact label elements that follow from that classification — signal word, pictograms, H-statements and P-statements. | Mandatory |
| 3 | Composition / information on ingredients Rapid response | What is actually in the product: the hazardous ingredients, their chemical identifiers, and their concentration or concentration range. | Mandatory |
| 4 | First aid measures Rapid response | What an untrained bystander should do in the first minutes after eye, skin, inhalation or ingestion exposure — and what a doctor needs to know. | Mandatory |
| 5 | Firefighting measures Workplace handling | What to extinguish the fire with, what must never be used, what the fire itself releases, and what protection firefighters need. | Mandatory |
| 6 | Accidental release measures Workplace handling | How to contain and clean up a spill without making it worse — separately for people who happen to be there and for trained responders. | Mandatory |
| 7 | Handling and storage Workplace handling | How to handle the product day to day, the conditions it must be stored under, and the materials it must never share a store with. | Mandatory |
| 8 | Exposure controls / personal protection Workplace handling | The occupational exposure limits that apply, and the engineering controls and personal protective equipment that keep workers under them. | Mandatory |
| 9 | Physical and chemical properties Technical data | The measured physical data — physical state, flash point, boiling point, explosion limits, vapour pressure, pH, solubility and the rest of the eighteen basic properties. | Mandatory |
| 10 | Stability and reactivity Technical data | What makes the product decompose or react, which materials are incompatible with it, and what hazardous products the decomposition creates. | Mandatory |
| 11 | Toxicological information Technical data | What exposure does to a human body — by route, by dose and by duration — and the data behind each health hazard class in the classification. | Mandatory |
| 12 | Ecological information Environment, waste, transport, law | What the product does to water, soil and living organisms once it escapes — aquatic toxicity, degradability, bioaccumulation, mobility, PBT/vPvB and endocrine disruption. | Not enforced |
| 13 | Disposal considerations Environment, waste, transport, law | How to dispose of the product, its residues and its contaminated packaging — and which waste legislation governs that. | Not enforced |
| 14 | Transport information Environment, waste, transport, law | How the product is regulated in transport: UN number, proper shipping name, transport hazard class, packing group and environmental hazard status. | Not enforced |
| 15 | Regulatory information Environment, waste, transport, law | Which chemical laws apply to the product beyond classification — authorisation, restriction, SVHC status, major-accident thresholds, national inventories. | Not enforced |
| 16 | Other information Document control | When the sheet was written or revised, what changed since the last version, what the abbreviations mean, and which sources the data came from. | Mandatory |
Sections 12 to 15 are not enforced by OSHA — ecology, disposal, transport and wider chemical law belong to the EPA, the Department of Transportation and other agencies, not to the Hazard Communication Standard. They are still mandatory under REACH Annex II, and nearly every commercial US sheet carries them anyway so that one document can travel.
02 · Find an item
Which section is it in?
Type what you are looking for — gloves, flash point,
UN number, LD50, waste code — and this points at the
section that carries it.
Nothing on the sheet is indexed under that word yet. The section 16 abbreviations key is the usual place to start when a term on a sheet is unfamiliar — and every section page below lists its own subsections in full.
03 · How to read one
The sections cluster by who reads them
The order is not arbitrary. It runs from what someone needs in thirty seconds to what an auditor checks last.
Sections 1–4
Rapid response
Anyone, in the first 30 seconds. Identification · Hazards identification · Composition / information on ingredients · First aid measures
Sections 5–8
Workplace handling
EHS, line operators, store keepers. Firefighting measures · Accidental release measures · Handling and storage · Exposure controls / personal protection
Sections 9–11
Technical data
Toxicologists, formulators, engineers. Physical and chemical properties · Stability and reactivity · Toxicological information
Sections 12–15
Environment, waste, transport, law
Regulators, logistics, waste contractors. Ecological information · Disposal considerations · Transport information · Regulatory information
Section 16
Document control
Compliance auditors. Other information
04 · FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How many sections does an SDS have?
Sixteen. The count and the order come from Annex 4 of the UN GHS and are the same worldwide: Identification, Hazards identification, Composition, First aid, Firefighting, Accidental release, Handling and storage, Exposure controls, Physical and chemical properties, Stability and reactivity, Toxicological information, Ecological information, Disposal, Transport, Regulatory information, Other information.
How many sections does OSHA require on an SDS?
OSHA enforces twelve of the sixteen: sections 1 to 11 and section 16. Sections 12 (Ecological information), 13 (Disposal considerations), 14 (Transport information) and 15 (Regulatory information) may appear on a US safety data sheet but are not enforced by OSHA, because those subjects fall to the EPA, the Department of Transportation and other agencies. In practice almost every commercial US sheet carries all sixteen anyway. Under REACH Annex II in the EU, all sixteen are mandatory.
Are there 8 sections on each SDS?
No — an SDS has sixteen sections. The confusion usually comes from the older Material Safety Data Sheet, which had no fixed section count before GHS, and from training material that covers only the first eight because those are the ones an operator reads during an incident.
What are the most important sections of an SDS?
It depends who is reading. In an emergency, sections 1 to 4 answer what it is, how bad it is, what is in it and what to do in the first minutes. For daily work, sections 7 and 8 govern handling, storage and protective equipment. For an auditor, section 16 comes first — the revision date tells you whether the rest of the document can be trusted. No section is optional in the EU.
Is there a difference between MSDS sections and SDS sections?
Yes. "MSDS" is the pre-GHS US term, and MSDS documents had no mandated section count, headings or order — content varied by supplier. The 16-section structure arrived with the UN GHS in 2003 and became US law through OSHA's 2012 HazCom rule, fully enforced from 1 June 2015. A document labelled "MSDS" today is either a legacy file or a loose use of the word; the sections you should be looking for are the sixteen below.
Looking at a real sheet, not the format?
The SDS library carries substance reference pages built on this structure — harmonised classification from CLP Annex VI, a computed storage verdict, response data and transport information. For the format itself in one continuous read, see Safety data sheet format: 16 sections explained.
Reference aid only. This hub describes what the regulations require under each heading; it is not a substitute for the safety data sheet of the product you hold, or for professional advice on classification.