The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy partially revised section 41 of the Quality Control and Safety Management of Industrial Products Act in January 2012 [2]. The revision compels producers to submit data that include the ingredients, compounding ratio, and security-related information to the ministry. However, only a small proportion of the hazards information and caution labels are being provided to the public since companies are self-regulative and not compulsory.
The MSDS system is a way of providing safety information on chemicals. In Korea, importers and manufacturers of chemicals have been required to draft an MSDS for each chemical since 1996. It is composed of 16 sections (e.g. toxicological information, physical and chemical properties, etc.). Since the MSDS system is not applicable to general consumer merchandise, the safety control of household chemical products is not guaranteed by this approach.