When Your Foreign Supplier Won't Send an SDS, You're the Importer Under OSHA HazCom

A shipment of imported coolant clears customs Tuesday morning. By Tuesday afternoon, your receiving lead calls: the drums are on the dock, the bill of lading is clean, and the only Safety Data Sheet attached is a four-page PDF in German that references the EU CLP regulation. Production wants the chemical in the system by Wednesday. The supplier’s U.S. account rep is “checking with corporate.”

This is the moment most EHS managers Google “what to do if foreign supplier won’t provide SDS.” It is also the moment most facilities discover they are the OSHA-defined importer, not the broker on the bill of lading, and that the duty to produce a compliant SDS has already shifted to them.

⚡ TL;DR: Under 29 CFR 1910.1200(c), the “importer” is the first U.S. business with employees that receives a foreign-produced hazardous chemical. That business — not the customs broker, not the foreign manufacturer — owns the Safety Data Sheet. If the foreign supplier won’t send a compliant SDS, the U.S. importer must author one in English with a U.S. address and U.S. phone number, classify the chemical under GHS criteria, generate GHS labels, train affected employees, and update the written HazCom program. HCS 2024 manufacturer/importer deadline is May 19, 2026; employer deadline is November 20, 2026. Per-violation penalties run $3,000–$8,000 typical, $16,550 serious cap, $165,514 willful cap (2025 adjustments).

You Are the Importer. You Probably Did Not Know.

OSHA’s definition of “importer” is narrower than the customs definition and broader than most EHS managers expect. Under 29 CFR 1910.1200(c), an importer is “the first business with employees within the Customs Territory of the United States which receives hazardous chemicals produced in other countries for the purpose of supplying them to distributors or employers within the United States.”

Three things follow:

The customs broker is not the importer. They have no employees handling the chemical; they handle paperwork.
The foreign manufacturer is not the importer. They are outside the Customs Territory.
Whichever U.S. business first takes the chemical for use, formulation, or resale is the importer. If that is your facility, you own the HazCom obligation.

OSHA’s 2018 standard interpretation makes the consequence explicit: if an importer does not receive a compliant SDS from the foreign supplier, the importer must create one. The foreign supplier’s silence, language barrier, or refusal to comply with U.S. format does not relieve the U.S. business of any duty under 1910.1200(g).

What the SDS Has to Contain — and Why a Foreign Manufacturer’s Sheet Almost Never Counts

OSHA’s mandatory format lives in Appendix D to 1910.1200: 16 sections, in a specified order, in English, with a U.S. responsible-party identification in Section 1.

A typical foreign-supplier document fails on the basics:

Language. 1910.1200(g)(2) requires English. The employer may maintain copies in other languages too, but the SDS of record must be English.
U.S. responsible party. Section 1 must list a U.S. address and a U.S. telephone number for emergency contact. A foreign manufacturer’s address may appear, but cannot substitute. This requirement is reinforced in OSHA’s 2018 interpretation letter.
Classification basis. Hazard classes and categories must be assigned under GHS criteria in Appendix A. EU CLP classifications are similar but not identical, and a copy-paste from a CLP sheet will not necessarily pass an OSHA inspection.
HCS 2024 alignment. After OSHA’s January 15, 2026 extension notice, manufacturers and importers have until May 19, 2026 to bring substance SDSs into HCS 2024 (GHS Revision 7) format. Mixture SDSs follow on November 19, 2027.

A foreign sheet may give you a useful starting point for hazard data. It does not satisfy the standard.

The Three Decisions That Have to Happen Before the Chemical Enters the Workplace

When a shipment arrives without a compliant SDS, three decisions follow in order. Each one is a documented step in the written HazCom program required by 1910.1200(e).

Decision 1 — Quarantine until classified. A chemical without a compliant SDS cannot lawfully be put into use, because employees cannot be trained on its hazards under 1910.1200(h). Receiving holds the material until step 2 or 3 is complete.

Decision 2 — Escalate to the supplier, with a hard deadline. The fastest path is the foreign manufacturer providing a compliant SDS through their U.S. representative or distributor. Set a deadline — typically 5 to 10 business days — and a fallback action if missed.

Decision 3 — Source from a U.S. distributor, or author your own. If escalation fails, you have two options. Substitute the foreign chemical with a U.S.-sourced equivalent that arrives with a compliant SDS. Or assume the importer role formally and author a compliant SDS in-house.

Most EHS managers do not know they are legally permitted to author the SDS themselves. 1910.1200(g)(1) explicitly extends authoring authority to “chemical manufacturer, importer, or employer.” If you are the importer (Decision 1 above), you may author. The question becomes whether you have the in-house capacity, or whether you bring in an IH/EHS partner who has authored SDSs at scale.

Authoring an SDS: The Work That Actually Has to Happen

The Appendix D format is not difficult; the underlying hazard classification is where most authoring efforts stall. A defensible 16-section SDS requires:

Identification (Section 1) — Product identifier, recommended use, U.S. importer name, U.S. address, U.S. emergency phone number.
Hazard identification (Section 2) — GHS classification (health and physical hazards), signal word, hazard statements, pictograms, precautionary statements.
Composition / information on ingredients (Section 3) — Chemical identity and concentration ranges for hazardous components. HCS 2024 changes the rules on concentration ranges and trade-secret claims — relevant when you cross the May 19, 2026 substance deadline.
First-aid, fire-fighting, accidental release, handling and storage (Sections 4–7) — Practical guidance pulled from primary toxicology, safety, and physical-property sources.
Exposure controls / personal protection (Section 8) — Including OSHA PEL, NIOSH REL, and ACGIH TLV where applicable for each hazardous component.
Physical and chemical properties (Section 9) — From manufacturer data, lab analysis, or authoritative references.
Stability and reactivity, toxicology, ecology, disposal, transport, regulatory (Sections 10–15) — Pulled from primary literature and EPA, DOT, and state references.
Other information (Section 16) — Including revision history, abbreviations, and references.

Each classification decision has to be supported by data the authoring entity can produce on request. “We copied this from the EU sheet” is not a defense.

The Inspection Math: Why This Issue Compounds

OSHA’s 1910.1200 standard is one of the most-cited rules in the federal inspection program. The 2026 Top-10 analysis from SmartQHSE puts HazCom at 7,320 citations and $745,810 in proposed penalties for the most recent compliance year — the kind of volume that comes from compliance officers pulling chemical inventories and asking for the corresponding SDS on each item.

Penalty exposure for foreign-supplier SDS gaps stacks fast. Industry data on HazCom citations shows mid-size employers seeing $3,000–$8,000 per item on missing or non-compliant SDSs. Multiply by a 10% gap on a 50-chemical inventory, and a single inspection produces a $20,000–$40,000 exposure that did not exist before the compliance officer arrived.

Worse: if the facility has been told — by a prior inspection, internal audit, or employee complaint — that a foreign-supplied chemical lacks a compliant SDS, continued use without remediation can be charged as willful. The 2025 willful cap is $165,514 per violation, with a minimum of $11,524. A single repeat citation can dwarf the cost of authoring the SDS in the first place.

Compliance Deadlines You Need on the Calendar

OSHA’s January 15, 2026 extension moved the HCS 2024 dates by four months. The current schedule is in the Federal Register notice:

May 19, 2026 — Manufacturers and importers must use HCS 2024 (GHS Rev 7) format for substances. Any SDS your team authors for a foreign-supplied product after this date should track the new requirements.
November 20, 2026 — Employers must update workplace labels, written HazCom programs, and training to HCS 2024. This is the date when your written program needs to reflect HCS 2024 even if you do not import.
November 19, 2027 — Manufacturers and importers must use HCS 2024 format for mixtures.
May 19, 2028 — Distributors must ship only HCS 2024-compliant containers for mixtures.

If you are authoring SDSs in-house for foreign-supplied chemicals, every sheet should be HCS 2024 compliant by the May 19, 2026 substance deadline. Authoring a sheet in HCS 2012 format today commits you to reauthoring it inside 12 months.

Who This Hits Hardest

Three buyer profiles carry the weight, even when they think the foreign supplier owns it:

Direct importers in chemical manufacturing, specialty distribution, and machinery (NAICS 325, 424690, 333). These businesses are statutorily the importer. There is no small-business exemption under HazCom.
Specialty manufacturers using imported raw materials — aerospace, automotive Tier 1 and Tier 2, electronics assembly, pharmaceutical contract manufacturing (NAICS 3364, 3363, 334, 3254). Many do not realize they are the legal importer because a freight forwarder appears on the bill of lading. The OSHA definition follows control of the chemical, not the customs paperwork.
Distributors that relabel or repackage imported product. Under 1910.1200(f), a U.S. distributor that relabels inherits labeling and SDS obligations and can be cited alongside or instead of the original importer.

How iSi Closes This Gap

The foreign-supplier SDS gap is exactly the kind of work the iSi plug-in augmentation model is built for. Your safety manager owns the relationship with operations and the regulatory program. We bring the IH and HazCom authoring depth — classification under GHS, 16-section SDS authoring to Appendix D, GHS-compliant label generation under 1910.1200(f), updates to the written HazCom program, and training rollouts that satisfy 1910.1200(h).

A small portfolio — say 5 to 15 foreign-sourced chemicals — typically moves from quarantine to compliant SDS-on-file in 4 to 6 weeks, with the heaviest lift in classification justification. Larger portfolios scale with the same workflow. The investment is a fraction of the willful exposure on a single chemical, and a fraction of the loaded cost of building in-house GHS authoring capacity for a problem that may only surface a few times a year.

If you have foreign-sourced chemicals on site without compliant SDSs — or you are not sure whether the sheets you have meet HCS 2024 — that is the conversation. Reach out and we will walk the chemical inventory together.