COSHH Assessment vs Safety Data Sheet: What's the Difference?

COSHH Assessment vs SDS (Short Answer)

A Safety Data Sheet (SDS) is a document the manufacturer provides about a product — its hazards and how to handle it safely in general. A COSHH assessment is something you write about how that product is used in your specific workplace. The SDS is the same wherever the product is sold; the COSHH assessment is unique to your tasks, quantities, people, and conditions.

The key point: an SDS is not a COSHH assessment, and it can never replace one. The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 require you to assess the risk from how you use a substance — the SDS is the starting reference, not the finished assessment. The rest of this guide explains the difference and how the SDS feeds into your COSHH work.

(You may also see "MSDS" — Material Safety Data Sheet. That is the older name; in the UK and EU the current term is simply "SDS." They mean the same kind of document.)

What an SDS Is

A Safety Data Sheet is the manufacturer's document for a hazardous product. By law your supplier must provide it free of charge. It has a standard 16-section structure covering, among other things:

• The hazards of the substance (Section 2)
• First-aid measures (Section 4)
• Handling and storage (Section 7)
• Exposure controls and PPE recommendations (Section 8)
• Toxicological information (Section 11)

An SDS tells you what the substance is and what it can do. What it does not tell you is whether your people are at risk doing your job — because the manufacturer has no idea how much you use, in what space, for how long, or who is nearby.

What a COSHH Assessment Is

A COSHH assessment takes the information from the SDS and applies it to your actual workplace. It looks at:

• The specific task and how the substance is used
• How much is used, how often, and in what conditions
• Who could be exposed and how (inhalation, skin, eyes, ingestion)
• The control measures you have in place
• Whether those controls are adequate, or whether more is needed

Two businesses using the identical product can have very different COSHH assessments. A cleaner using a litre of bleach a day in a well-ventilated kitchen faces a different risk from someone using it in bulk in a cramped, unventilated room — even though the SDS is the same for both.

Why the SDS Alone Is Not Enough

This is the mistake that gets businesses caught out at inspection. Printing the SDS for every product and filing it does not make you COSHH-compliant. The SDS gives general hazard information; it does not assess the risk from use in your specific work activity, including the amounts and concentrations you handle.

An inspector who sees a folder of SDSs and no assessments will treat you as having no COSHH assessment at all. The SDS is the raw material; the assessment is what you are legally required to produce from it.

How the SDS Feeds Your COSHH Assessment

The good news is that the SDS does most of the heavy lifting on the hazard side — you just have to translate it into your context. Here is which SDS sections feed which parts of a COSHH assessment:

SDS section	Feeds this part of your COSHH assessment
Section 2 — Hazard identification	Identifying the hazards (pictograms, H-phrases)
Section 7 — Handling and storage	Your storage and handling controls
Section 8 — Exposure controls / PPE	Workplace exposure limits, ventilation, PPE selection
Section 11 — Toxicological information	Health effects, sensitisers, health surveillance triggers
Section 4 — First aid	Your emergency and first-aid procedures

If you are not sure how to pull the right information out of each section, our guide on how to read an SDS walks through all 16 sections, and our free SDS Section Decoder shows which sections matter most for a COSHH assessment.

You Need Both — Here's the Workflow

1. Collect the SDS for every hazardous product (request from your supplier if missing).
2. Read the relevant sections to understand the hazards and recommended controls.
3. Assess the risk in your workplace — your tasks, quantities, people, and conditions.
4. Record your controls and decide whether they are adequate.
5. Review both: keep SDSs current (suppliers update them), and review your assessment at least annually or when anything changes.

Step 1 to 2 is the SDS; step 3 onward is the COSHH assessment. Both have to be kept up to date, and both have to be accessible to the staff who need them.

Quick Comparison

• SDS: product-specific, written by the manufacturer, same everywhere, a reference document.
• COSHH assessment: workplace-specific, written by you, unique to your conditions, a legal requirement.
• Relationship: the SDS is the starting point; the assessment is what you must produce from it.

For the full step-by-step, see our guide on how to do a COSHH assessment.

Keeping SDSs and Assessments Together

The practical problem is keeping the two linked: each COSHH assessment depends on a current SDS, suppliers reissue SDSs without telling you, and the two end up in different folders on different computers.

COSHHmate is being built to keep each substance's SDS information and its COSHH assessment in one place, so the assessment is always tied to the substance it covers. Pricing will be a flat monthly fee with no per-user charges. To get your COSHH paperwork properly organised, join the waitlist.

Sources

• COSHH Regulations 2002, Regulation 6 — Assessment of the risk to health
• Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 (full text)
• HSE — COSHH guidance

This is general guidance based on the COSHH Regulations 2002 and published HSE guidance. Verify the requirements for your specific substances against their Safety Data Sheets and HSE guidance. Not legal or safety advice.