Australia's Science Forum

Hi All,

I have been using Chemwatch for 9 years and we have just been given access to the new Chemwatch gold FFX. I have been doing my register in an Excel spread sheet as this was the system in place when I first started my job. My question is if there is any benefit of adding our Chemicals to a manifest in Chemwatch, or will this be wasted effort if the system in place is working?

I have worked out how to make a manifest in the new system which for some reason I was unable to do in Chemwatch gold. I generally only use Chemwatch to print M(SDS) or labels.

Also, in viewing the online instructions on setting up the new systems, it states to use local settings, not GHS. I was wondering if I should start labelling with GHS settings now?,

regards Kim

Hi, Kim
I've been using a spreadsheet for years for my register. I'm happy with it. I'm sure the Chemwatch manifest has its advantages once it is set up but I have never taken the time to do so, and unless I am directed to, I doubt that I will.
When I make a new label I make a GHS one, so slowly making the transition from the old ones.

Hi Kim

The benefits of using Chemwatch for your manifest is that it allows easy off site access to your chemical list. This is especially important in the event of a fire where the local brigade would need to know what chemicals are being stored.

Now the downside. You are limited to what you can add to the manifest, it has to be something that is listed on Chemwatch. I'm sure you have found plenty of things that we have around the school that aren't listed. The list that is generated is difficult to read, especially for people not familiar with either Chemwatch or chemical manifests. I may be doing something wrong, but last year I went to the trouble of adding the maximum quantities we ever have but a lot of this information did not show up on the manifest I printed. I think it may have rounded down all the small quantities to zero. Overall, I just find it much more difficult to work with than a spreadsheet.

Last year I converted all the Chemwatch lists to a spreadsheet before sending out to the various faculties. This made it easier to manipulate the information, add clear headings, so everyone knew what they had to do. I am now in the process of converting our manifest to a spreadsheet and deleting the Chemwatch manifest. I just need to find out where to store it (server, Google docs) to that everyone has access.

And on the remote access, early this year the local fire brigade came over and picked up a hard copy of our manifest for their records, so I guess they weren't planning on using an on-line version!

I'm with J - every time I print a label now I print a GHS label. We need to have the labelling changed by January 2017, so may as well get started now!

I'm happy for you to PM me if you have any questions.

we had it the other way around. when I started here the register was setup on chemwatch but we moved away from that and now we use a speadsheet on excel for all the departments to see around the school. I have my sreadsheet setup with dates for mini and full sds's and when they reach 5 years of age they turn red to alert me when they have expired. also we have coloured in each chemical according to the school dot system. so everyone can see what year appropriate chemicals they can use.
We have remote access here as teachers were provided with a laptop and ipad. We also have have hard copies in admin for the fire brigade.

I have also started my GHS labels on our chemicals.

Hi all again,

I have decided with your help not to go to the trouble of adding our stock into a Chemwatch manifest. Very happy, it will save lots of work. I will also start using the GHS labels.

Big thank you to everyone who answered me,

regards, Kim.

Yes Merilyn the fire service can see when getting to your school, where the chemicals are and what they are. I forgot who told me, but soon once you have your manifest on chemwatch, it will be your friend. When they change a label or SDS, and you have it on your manifest, it will tell you need to re-print your SDS or label. It will alert you to changes.

Could be useful

Chemwatch is very useful. However, since the glitch a few weeks ago, some of my chemicals and quantities were changed/added out of nowhere. Luckily, I printed out a hard copy before that happened. But now I have to go through and check everything again...

Yes we had to do the same, had amounts you have never heard of. We also had double chemicals, guess the switch over was not easy.

Interesting thing with regards to the manifest and the Fire brigade.
When we had the fire here 3 years ago that destroyed 2 labs and the prep room no one was at all interested as to what chemicals were on site.
This comes from one of the firies who also was the lab Assistant at one of the other schools in Tamworth!