COSHH stands for Control of Substances Hazardous to Health. The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 stop an employer carrying out work liable to expose employees to a hazardous substance unless they have first made a suitable and sufficient assessment of the risk and then implemented the steps it identified. The order matters: assess, then control, then work. Not work, then assess when somebody asks.
COSHH substances: what counts as hazardous to health
More than the obvious bottles. Chemicals and products containing them, fumes, dusts, vapours, mists, gases and asphyxiating gases, biological agents where the work involves them, and any dust in substantial concentration. Flour in a bakery, wood dust in a joinery shop, silica in cut stone, and used engine oil all fall in. Lead, asbestos and radioactive substances have their own regulations instead.
What is a COSHH assessment? What regulation 6 requires
The hazardous properties of the substance. The health information the supplier provides, including the safety data sheet. The level, type and duration of exposure. The circumstances of the work, including the amount involved. Activities such as maintenance where exposure could be unusually high. Any relevant occupational exposure limit. And the effect of the control measures already taken or planned.
What is a workplace exposure limit, and what it is not
A workplace exposure limit is a concentration in air, averaged over a reference period, that must not be exceeded. It is a legal ceiling and not a safety line: for many substances there is no level at which harm stops, and the duty is to reduce exposure so far as is reasonably practicable regardless. HSE publishes the list in EH40, and a substance having no listed limit does not put it outside COSHH.
Who the duty covers
The employer, towards employees, and under regulation 3 towards other people at work who might be affected. The self-employed are covered in respect of their own exposure where the work is of a prescribed description, so the answer to whether COSHH applies to a self-employed person is that it usually does, and that assuming otherwise is a common and expensive error.
Employer and employee responsibilities for COSHH control measures
The employer assesses, prevents exposure where reasonably practicable or otherwise adequately controls it, maintains and examines the controls, provides information, instruction and training, and where required arranges monitoring and health surveillance. The employee uses the controls provided, reports defects, and takes part in health surveillance. Neither list works without the other.
What is a COSHH assessment, and what it is not
It is a written judgement about the use of a hazardous substance in your workplace: what it is, who is exposed, by which route, how much and how often, what the controls are, who checks them, and what happens on a spill or an exposure. It is not the supplier's safety data sheet, which describes the substance rather than the use, and it is not a list of products. Where an assessment is thin it is nearly always missing one of two things: the substances produced BY the work, such as wood dust, welding fume or flour in the air, and the statutory examination of any extraction relied on as a control.
What is COSHH assessment paperwork actually for
It exists so that the people doing the work know what they are handling and what to do when it goes wrong, and so that the employer can show the judgement was made. Those are two different audiences and a good assessment serves both: a short, specific sheet at the point of use for the first, and the assessment with its date, author and review for the second. The test of whether it works is not its length. Ask the person using the substance what happens if it gets in their eye, and whether the extraction above them has ever been examined, and the paperwork either matches the room or it does not.
Other questions people ask
What does COSHH stand for?
Control of Substances Hazardous to Health. The regulations are the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002.
Does COSHH apply to self-employed individuals?
Generally yes. The regulations apply the assessment and control duties to a self-employed person in respect of their own exposure where the work is of a prescribed description, and to anyone else affected by their work.
What substances does COSHH include?
Chemicals and products containing them, fumes, dusts, vapours, mists, gases, biological agents at work and dust in substantial concentrations. Asbestos, lead and radioactive substances are excluded because they have their own regulations.
Is petrol covered by COSHH?
Yes, and it also engages DSEAR because it is a flammable dangerous substance. A workplace storing or decanting petrol usually needs both assessments, which cover different harms.
What is the coshh meaning in practice, beyond the acronym?
The letters stand for the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations, and the practical meaning is a duty rather than a list: assess what the substances people are actually exposed to can do to them, and then control it, in that order. What catches employers out is the scope. It is not a shelf of labelled chemicals. It is flour dust in a bakery, wood dust in a joinery, engine exhaust in a workshop, and anything given off by the work rather than bought in a bottle. If a process creates it and somebody breathes it, swallows it or gets it on their skin, the duty is engaged.
Is a coshh risk assessment pdf good enough as the record?
The format is not the problem. What the regulations ask for is that the assessment is suitable and sufficient, that the significant findings are recorded where five or more people are employed, and that it is reviewed when something changes. A PDF satisfies all three. What a PDF makes harder is the reviewing: a locked document tends to be re-issued rather than updated, and the version on the wall drifts from the substance in use. Keep the editable original, and treat the PDF as the copy you hand out.