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| The history and philosophy behind this resource. | |
| A curated collection of books and reference materials concerning Safety Data Sheets and closely related topics. | |
| Paste your plain text SDS into the SDS-Demystifier, and it will be converted into a hypertext-enriched document with links to detailed explanations of each key term. | |
| An extensive list of frequently asked questions about Safety Data Sheets including regulations, content, compliance, and more. | |
| A humorous take on Safety Data Sheet jargon. Fill in the blanks on our entry form to generate a personalized Unsafety Data Sheet to share with your coworkers. | |
| Since 1995, we've maintained this massive curated list of the best places to find Safety Data Sheets on the Internet. | |
| You are here! Way more than a glossary, this hypertext-enhanced resource covers hundreds of SDS-related terms and expert knowledge. Each entry includes both the SDS relevance and links to additional authoritative resources. | |
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| The OSHA regulations behind SDS regulations, including the inspection guidelines and over 400 official interpretations letters under the Hazard Communication Standard | |
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| Commercial companies that will create SDS's for your specific needs as well as SDS translation companies. |
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Demystify Safety Data Sheets with the Safety Demystifier
Mystified by all those terms in your Safety Data Sheets (SDS's) or other chemical health and safety documents? The Safety Demystifier automatically scans your text or HTML-based safety materials and inserts appropriate hyperlinks to our SDS HyperGlossary or outside agencies such as OSHA for improved readability and comprehension.
Yes, no more sweating over what "diaphoresis" means. Simply run your sheet through the Safety Demystifier and your SDS will forever say diaphoresis instead of plain old diaphoresis. Explanations for any term will only be one click away! Try it out live below!
Instructions
Paste your SDS sheet text (or any other safety document, for that matter) into the box below, hit the Demystify button, and the Deymstified output will appear in the box below. Your input can be plain or HTML text, and the system will output it as HTML. You can also type directly into the box and edit it as well.
There are two Demystifying options available:
- Verbose Mode - This will match every occurrence of known terms in the pasted document. That sounds great, until you realize that if the paragraph has "chemical" in it five or size times, having all those redundant links reduces the readability of the document, particularly on a mobile device. When Verbose Mode is off, the Demystifer code will normally try to match only the first occurence of a particular term in a chunk of text (paragraph, bullet list item etc.)
- Neaten HTML - This is here because we've found that HTML documents from OSHA's web site are absurdly formatted with pointless white spaces that make the document a pain to edit or read as HTML. This mode is on by default and it will strip excess whitespace characters as well as excessive line breaks. The output will leave two nice line breaks between paragraphs and it will indent list item text with a tab to make the readability and editing easier. But if you have your own line spacings and stuff you want to preserve, simply turn this feature off.
The output is HTML text. You can use one of the three buttons below the output to save your document for posterity:
- Copy HTML to Clipboard - This will copy the raw HTML code of the output to your clipboard so you can paste it into your own HTML document. The stuff you see in the box is rendered HTML; the stuff on the clipboard is the raw underlying HTML code.
- Save as HTML - This will download the HTML source code of the Output text box to your computer. If you did not include <HEAD> and <BODY> tags, the Demystifier will add those for you so you have a ready-to-go document.
- Save as PDF - This will render the output of the Output text box as a live clickable document in PDF form. Your brower/OS will dictate how that happens and looks. In most browsers we tried, the hyperlinks in the PDF file work, but not with Chrome for Mac (boo!).
Paste your SDS here as plain text or HTML code:
Need some sample text? Click me to put some into the input box and then try toggling Verbose mode on and off.
Further Info and Questions
- How long of a document can I Demystify?
There is no practical limit. We've never tried something crazy-long; most safety documents are a only a couple pages long. MIT's entire chemical hygiene plan took about 2 seconds to process.
- Some words should have turned into hyperlinks but they didn't.
If you have Verbose Mode turned off, the Demystifier will only replace a particular term the first time it encounters it in a chunk of text such as a paragraph or bullet list item. That decision is based on the URL it would insert rather than the specific text it would replace. So if the Demystifier encounters "milligram" it will not bother to replace "milligrams" because they both go to the same entry on mass unit conversions. If you'd like to see all those links, simply turn Verbose Mode On.
The Demystifier will not attempt to alter text that appears between HTML anchor tags (<a...> and </a>). Otherwise, it would disrupt existing hyperlinks or text anchors.
- Can I use and distribute these sheets with links to your HyperGlossary?
Yes. The Safety Demystifier gives absolute pathnames to the hyperlinks so they will work whether you move the files to another directory or another server. No tweaking required. Whether they are sheets for your own use or your customers, the hyperlinks will reduce confusion about terminology and better inform the reader.
- What does this cost?
Use of the Safety Demystifier and SDS HyperGlossary is completely free. And we don't make you register, ask who you are, or abuse you with cookies. So what's in it for us? 1) It demonstrates the kind of expertise that ILPI can provide to your company, 2) it's a great community service and 3) it drives traffic to our (advertiser-supported) SDS pages.
- Can I batch convert files?
Currently, no. But if you want to pay us, we'd be happy to consider doing it for you!
- Can the Safety Demystifier handle PDF documents?
You can save the output as a PDF and you can copy and paste the content of a PDF for Demystifying, but it will not edit an existing PDF document.
- I saved my Demystifier output as a PDF but the links aren't clickable.
This feature depends on which browser and OS you have. It works on all the ones we tried with the exception of Chrome for Mac OS. If your output is not clickable then try to generate the PDF from a different browser.
- Can I simply type in the URL of a sheet and get it converted that way?
Currently, no, but it's a great idea. We haven't looked at it because this resource does the conversions in your browser rather than our server, and there
- Is the Safety Demystifier limited to SDS's?
Nope. If you have a chemical hygiene plan, letter, email etc. or simply type something into the entry box, the Safety Demystifier will convert it. Give it a try. Of course, if you are converting material that is not relevant to safety you could be in for a surprise. Words like basic, concentration, mole and volatile have other meanings, for example.
- My SDS was all capital letters, but the Safety Demystifier changed the case of some words.
That was a problem in our old version before the release of the current version in Sep 2025. Our new version matches the case of the replaced words. And it's also better about matching whole words so it won't, for example, replace the 'air' in 'stairwell', but it will in 'fresh air'.
- Will the Safety Demystifier mess up my hyperlinks in my HTML documents?
No. "Hypergolic" would ordinarily be replaced with a hyperlink, but not if it appeared inside an HTML anchor such as <a href="http://bogus.com/hypergolic.html">check out this primer on hypergolic materials</a>.
- This thing is awesome! Can I post it on my own site?
No, that is an illegal and unauthorized use of our intellectual property. We put a lot of hard work into the copyrighted code that lets this run on your browser. But feel free to link to this page, of course!