Section 3: Safety Practices

Glossary

Regardless of whether you are producing garden vegetables or large-scale farm crops, you may be using a variety of chemicals.
Some of these can be hazardous, and being aware of the type of hazard involved is essential to your proper and safe usage of them.
Fortunately, in Canada, there is a national workplace hazard communication standard to help us recognize dangerous products and instruct us how to use them safely.
This standard is known as WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System).
It functions by doing the following:

• identifying hazardous materials and declaring them as controlled substances.
  
  
• labelling each controlled product with a standardized, easily recognized symbol to indicate the type of hazard involved.
  
  
• providing a Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS), that gives information on safe use of the controlled product, as well as first-aid measures to be used in case of worker contact with the product.

Learning WHMIS Class Symbols

In WHMIS, products are first assessed to:
a) see if they are hazardous and to
b) identify the type of hazard.

Any product that has been assessed as hazardous is considered a "controlled product" and must become part of WHMIS. 

A controlled product is a hazardous substance that requires proper WHMIS labeling and handling practices.

 
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Click here if you would you like a bookmark of the WHMIS Pictograms.