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COSHH Awareness
Half a day on the substances already in your building. What COSHH covers, how to read a safety data sheet, what a COSHH assessment has to do, and why the controls on the shelf are not controls until somebody uses them.
About this course
COSHH is the regulation people assume they comply with because there is a folder somewhere. The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002 require an employer to assess the risk from hazardous substances, prevent exposure where reasonably practicable, and control it adequately where prevention is not.
Most workplaces hold far more hazardous substances than they think. Cleaning chemicals, adhesives, fuels, paints, resins, coolants and solvents are obvious. Wood dust, silica dust from cutting, welding fume, flour, and bacteria in stagnant water are all covered too, and those are the ones that cause the slow damage nobody attributes to work until much later.
This half day is for the people using the substances. It covers the routes into the body, reading a label and a safety data sheet without needing a chemistry degree, what the COSHH assessment should tell you, the hierarchy of control, and how to use and look after the PPE and the local exhaust ventilation you already have.
It also covers what to do when something goes wrong: a splash, a spill, an exposure, and when to stop work and tell somebody.
- What COSHH covers, and the substances it specifically does not
- The routes of exposure: inhalation, skin contact and absorption, ingestion and injection
- Acute and chronic health effects, and why the slow ones matter most
- Reading a GHS label: the pictograms, signal words and hazard statements
- Getting what you need out of a safety data sheet in two minutes
- What a COSHH assessment must do, and how to use one rather than file it
- The hierarchy of control: eliminate, substitute, engineer, organise, then PPE
- Local exhaust ventilation, and why a bad extract is worse than none
- Choosing, fitting, wearing and storing RPE and gloves, including face fit in outline
- Health surveillance, spills, first aid, and reporting an exposure
How completing this course helps you
- An Acadame certificate in COSHH Awareness
- People who read the label before they open the container
- Controls that get used, because everybody understands what they are for
- Evidence that your COSHH information, instruction and training duty has been met
Who should attend?
Anybody who works with or near hazardous substances: cleaners and facilities staff, construction and maintenance workers, manufacturing and process operatives, laboratory and workshop staff, catering and hospitality teams, and the supervisors and managers responsible for them.
Entry requirements. None. It assumes no previous training and it is written for the people doing the work rather than the people writing the policy.
Ready to take the next step?
Choose a delivery option, compare dates and book with confidence, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
COSHH is not a folder
The assessment is the start, not the compliance
A COSHH assessment that nobody has read is not a control. The regulations require information, instruction and training as well as assessment, and that is the part inspectors find missing most often.
The useful test is simple: pick a substance off the shelf and ask the person who uses it what it does to you, what the controls are, and what they would do if it went in their eye. If the answers are not there, the folder is not doing anything.
This half day exists to close that gap. Run it onsite with your own substances and your own assessments in the room and it does double duty: the training happens and the gaps in the paperwork become obvious.
Know what you hold
An inventory of substances and current safety data sheets. Most sites find things nobody has bought for years.
Assess and control
A COSHH assessment per substance or task, working down the hierarchy rather than jumping to PPE.
Train the people using them
This half day, onsite, so the assessment turns into behaviour rather than a file.
Course content
What you will cover
The qualification is structured around the management of health and safety and the practical application of risk assessment.
What COSHH is
- The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002
- What is covered, and the exclusions such as asbestos, lead and radioactive material
- Substances you would not think of: dusts, fumes, vapours, mists and biological agents
- Routes of exposure into the body
- Acute and chronic effects, and the long latency problem
Information and assessment
- GHS labels: pictograms, signal words and hazard statements
- Safety data sheets and the sections that actually matter
- Workplace exposure limits in outline
- What a COSHH assessment has to cover
- Using the assessment on the job rather than filing it
Control and response
- The hierarchy of control
- Local exhaust ventilation and how to tell if it is working
- RPE and gloves: selection, fitting, wearing and storage
- Face fit testing in outline, and why beards matter
- Health surveillance and what it is for
- Spills, splashes and first aid
- Reporting exposure and near misses
Method of assessment
How COSHH Awareness is assessed
Assessment is built into the session rather than bolted on. Your trainer checks understanding as you go and there is a short written check at the end.
Practical exercises
Working through real labels and safety data sheets, including ones brought from your own store, and picking the controls for a substance you actually use.
Written check
A short paper at the end of the session covering the routes of exposure, the label pictograms and the hierarchy of control.
Certificate
An Acadame certificate on completion, with a recommended refresh every three years.
Ways to learn
How you can take this course
Every route covers the same accredited syllabus and the same support. Pick the one that fits how your people work.
Classroom
Tutor-led at one of our centres, with everything provided.
Ask us to open a classroom date →or ask MB nowDates and locations
Arrange this course
There are no scheduled dates for this course at the moment. It is normally arranged around you.
Tell us roughly when you need it and how many people are going, and we will come back with dates and a price.
Also available
In-company training
We run this one to order, at your place or ours.
Onsite / in-company
Run COSHH Awareness at your site
We deliver anywhere in the UK, on your dates and around your shift patterns. For six or more people it is usually cheaper per head than sending everyone to a centre, and nobody loses a day travelling.
Tell us roughly how many people and when, and we will come back with options and a price, or ask MB and get an answer straight away.
What onsite includes
- The same tutor, materials and certification as our centres
- Your venue or one we arrange near you
- Dates and start times built around your operation
- One invoice and one point of contact for the whole group
- Content examples drawn from your own workplace
COSHH Awareness FAQs
Chemicals, products containing chemicals, fumes, dusts, vapours, mists, nanotechnology, gases and asphyxiating gases, and biological agents. It does not cover asbestos, lead or radioactive substances, which have their own regulations, and it does not cover the general nuisance of a dusty environment where no substance hazardous to health is involved.
For every substance hazardous to health that your work involves, or every task where exposure could occur. In practice it is usually assessed by task rather than by bottle, which is more useful and considerably less work.
The regulations require employers to provide suitable and sufficient information, instruction and training for anyone exposed to hazardous substances. They do not name a course. Awareness training is the normal way employers meet that duty and evidence it.
Yes, and we would rather you did. Training on the actual products on your shelves, with your own safety data sheets and assessments in the room, is far more useful than generic examples, and it routinely turns up an assessment that is out of date.
Acadame. It is general awareness training rather than a regulated qualification, which is the right shape for this subject: it is built around what your people actually do and it can be adapted to your own equipment, substances and procedures. Where a regulated qualification is what you need instead, we will say so and point you at it.
Yes, anywhere in the UK, and it is usually the better option. Training on your own equipment, in your own building, with your own procedures in front of people, transfers to the job in a way a generic venue does not.
Up to twelve on a standard session. For practical subjects we will talk through numbers with you, because a room of twenty watching two people practise is not training.
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