Chemical Inventory

Is my lab required to have a Chemical Inventory?

Effective January 2009, as specified in the Chemical Hygiene Plan Template, inventories must be maintained for all hazardous chemicals. Hazardous chemicals include chemicals for which there is statistically significant evidence of health effects following exposure as well as flammable and explosive substances. The use of the online ChemTracker inventory system has been paid for by the EHS Office and is free to you. Its use is recommended but not required. For more information on the ChemTracker system contact the EHS Office at 2-3477 or email environment@mit.edu .

Why keep a Chemical Inventory?

There are many benefits to keeping an inventory of the chemicals you use in your labs and centers. It helps prevent spending money on chemicals that might already be on hand and helps keep tabs on expensive chemicals that you need for your research or work. It helps get your area up and working again quickly after an emergency, or for informing emergency responders who arrive at the scene so that they can respond appropriately and help minimize damage. For more details on the benefits of maintaining an inventory please read the Inventory Whitepaper

What are my options for storing my inventory information?

One Option available to your lab is the ChemTracker online chemical inventory system. MIT has purchased a new inventory system, ChemTracker to help you with your chemical inventory. The ChemTracker software was built for a consortium of universities and colleges, including Stanford, Boston College, Harvard and Penn State to name a few. It is free for you to use for your areas at MIT. It is a highly secure system hosted by Stanford that has sophisticated user authorizations administration capabilities that are maintained for you by the MIT EHS Office. If you would like to know more about this please contact us at 2-3477 or environment@mit.edu.

If your lab would prefer to keep your inventory in a spreadsheet, we might suggest using the format that could be uploaded to ChemTracker at a future date should you so desire, (Excel) Inventory Spreadsheet.

How do I use ChemTracker?

You will need to be set with ChemTracker authorizations in order to use the system. We suggest that it might be helpful for you to take the ChemTracker training that's offered by EHS before you start using the system. To see when the next ChemTracker training class is offered, go to the MIT Training and Events Catalog in the Environment Health and Safety section look for the course entitled ChemTracker Chemical Inventory Training (EHS0740c) under Chemical Hazards. For that course we ask that you bring with you 10 chemicals from your inventory to input during the training using the Inventory Spreadsheet mentioned below.

How do I access ChemTracker?

If you are already an authorized ChemTracker user, go to the ChemTracker User Login Site to access your ChemTracker Inventory. (https://chemtracker.stanford.edu)

Other tools available for me to use?

1. Using the ChemTracker templates you can organize your existing chemical inventory, and with help from the EHS office and have it uploaded into ChemTracker. Please provide the data for upload for you using this ChemTracker Inventory Spreadsheet, filling in all the required fields: (Excel) Inventory Spreadsheet.

2. There are a full series of user training documents available to you when you are in the ChemTracker system but to refresh your memory on how to add chemicals to ChemTracker by using the ChemTracker Inventory Quick Guide: (PDF) ChemTracker Inventory Quick Guide

For more information, contact EHS at 2-3477 or send an email to environment@mit.edu.