Do I need a hazardous substances register if I only use a small quantity of chemicals?

Yes — the requirement is triggered by the substance being GHS-classified as hazardous, not by the quantity used or stored. Small use doesn't exempt a workplace.

Where should the Safety Data Sheet be kept?

Accessible to the workers who actually use the substance, and available to emergency services or WorkSafe if requested — not filed only with management where the people handling the chemical day to day can't reach it.

Does a folder of SDS documents count as a hazardous substances register?

Not on its own. The register is the list — what's on site, in what form, kept current — while the SDS folder is supporting detail for each entry. A workplace needs both, not one standing in for the other.

What needs to be in your hazardous substances register in Victoria?

Taylor Scott, Victorian safety practitioner, Ardmor Operations — Last updated 21 July 2026·2 min read

Do you need a hazardous substances register?

If your workplace uses or stores any substance classified as hazardous under the Globally Harmonised System (GHS), you need one — and that covers more of a typical factory or workshop than people expect: solvents, degreasers, adhesives, welding consumables, fuels, paints, and most industrial cleaning chemicals all qualify. This is a duty under Victoria's OHS Regulations 2017, not an optional good-practice extra, and the register is one of the core registers in a workplace safety system.

What the register actually needs to include

Every hazardous substance used or stored on site — not just the drums in the chemical store, the smaller quantities too
The current Safety Data Sheet (SDS) for each one, and it needs to be genuinely accessible to the people who use the substance — not archived in a filing cabinet in an office nobody working with the chemical can get into
Kept up to date — a substance that's no longer on site should come off the register; a new one needs to be added before or as it arrives on site, not whenever someone gets around to it

Who actually needs to be able to get to it

Workers who use the substance day to day, emergency services responding to an incident, and a WorkSafe inspector if they ask for it. A register that only one person in the office knows how to open isn't accessible in the way the regulation intends — accessible means a worker or a first-aider can find the right SDS in the middle of an actual spill or exposure, not next week. An uncontrolled spill can also be a notifiable incident you have to report to WorkSafe, so the two records need to work together.

The gap that actually gets missed

It's rarely the big, obvious chemicals — everyone remembers to register the drum of degreaser or the cage of gas cylinders. It's the smaller stuff: a tin of touch-up paint, a can of adhesive picked up from a hardware store for a one-off job, a cleaning product that quietly changed brands last year without anyone updating the SDS on file. A register is only as good as the last time someone actually walked the site and checked what's really there against what's written down.

How Ardmor helps

Ardmor's chemical register comes pre-loaded with a library of common Australian workplace chemicals — pick from the list, or scan an SDS and the details populate automatically, instead of starting from a blank spreadsheet. Each entry also carries spill-response and first-aid guidance, so the register does double duty as the thing your first-aider actually reaches for during an incident, not a compliance file that only gets opened for an audit.

This article is general information for Victorian manufacturers, not legal advice. Last updated: 19 July 2026.