Most people working in UK businesses have heard of COSHH at some point. It often comes up during inductions, safety briefings, and workplace inspections. But while the acronym is familiar, the actual requirements are not always well understood. Knowing what COSHH involves is essential for anyone responsible for managing health and safety risks at work.
Most people working in UK businesses have heard of COSHH at some point. It often comes up during inductions, safety briefings, and workplace inspections. But while the acronym is familiar, the actual requirements are not always well understood. Knowing what COSHH involves is essential for anyone responsible for managing health and safety risks at work.
This guide explains what COSHH is, who it applies to, and what compliance looks like in practice. It also highlights an important point that is often overlooked: effective COSHH management depends on having accurate and up-to-date information about the hazardous substances used in your workplace. That information comes from the Safety Data Sheet (SDS), which plays a central role in helping businesses assess risks and implement the right control measures.
COSHH stands for Control of Substances Hazardous to Health. It is a set of regulations that have been in place in the UK since 1988, with the current version dating from 2002. The core idea is straightforward: if substances in your workplace can harm people, you need to know about it, assess the risk, and do something about it.
The regulations cover a wide range of substances that people might not immediately think of as hazardous:
If a substance can damage someone's health through breathing it in, skin contact, ingestion or injection, COSHH is likely to apply.
The HSE sets out a clear list of responsibilities under COSHH. Employers must:
That last point about information is where things often fall down in practice. You cannot assess the risks from a substance properly if you do not know what it actually contains, what it can do, and how to handle an incident involving it. That information comes from the Safety Data Sheet.
Under COSHH, employers are required to have access to a current Safety Data Sheet for every hazardous substance they use. The SDS is the document that tells you what classification a substance carries, what the exposure limits are, how to respond in an emergency, and what controls are appropriate.
In other words, the SDS is not just a compliance document to file away. It is the foundation that a COSHH risk assessment is built on.
Two practical requirements follow from this. You need to get an SDS from the manufacturer or supplier before you start using a new substance. And you need to make sure it stays current, because manufacturers revise SDS documents regularly as new hazard data comes in. An SDS that was accurate three years ago may no longer reflect how a substance is classified today.
ISDSS provides free access to over one million Safety Data Sheets, searchable by product name or manufacturer. You can build a personal library of the substances your workplace uses and download the latest SDS at any time.
This is one of the most common gaps we see. Workplaces have SDS documents, but they are outdated, stored somewhere nobody can find them, or not matched to the actual products on site. Getting this right is not complicated, but it does require a system.
COSHH is broad in scope. It applies across virtually every sector where people work with or around substances that could harm their health.
Employers carry the main legal responsibility. That means identifying every hazardous substance on site, completing COSHH assessments, putting controls in place, training staff, and keeping SDS documents current and accessible. Getting this wrong is a criminal matter, not just an admin issue.
Employees are responsible for following safe working procedures, using protective equipment properly, and raising concerns when something does not seem right. Understanding how to read a Safety Data Sheet is part of being able to do that well.
If you work for yourself and your work involves hazardous substances, COSHH still applies. The standard is the same whether you are an employer with fifty staff or a sole trader working on your own.
COSHH affects virtually every sector, but some feel it more than others:
A few categories of hazardous substance fall under separate legislation rather than COSHH. These include:
Even where separate regulations apply, you will still need a Safety Data Sheet for those substances. The SDS is the primary source of hazard information regardless of which regulatory framework governs the specific risk.
The Health and Safety Executive estimates that over 12,000 deaths per year in Great Britain are linked to past exposure to substances at work, with occupational lung disease being one of the biggest contributors. These are not accidents in the traditional sense. They are the result of years of uncontrolled or poorly managed exposure.
For employers, the consequences of getting COSHH wrong go beyond the obvious. There is the legal side: breaching COSHH is a criminal offence that can result in unlimited fines. There is the human side: workers developing conditions that affect them for the rest of their lives. And there is the practical side: businesses that take health and safety seriously tend to have better retention, fewer sick days and stronger operational standards overall.
Most of the time, doing COSHH properly is not complicated. It is a matter of knowing what is on site, having the right information to hand, and making sure the people doing the work understand what they are dealing with.
ISDSS gives UK workplaces free access to over one million Safety Data Sheets. Search by product name or manufacturer, download instantly, and save documents to your personal library.
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