An ICSC summarizes essential health and safety information on chemicals for their use at the "shop floor" level by workers and employers in factories, agriculture, construction and other work places. ICSCs are not legally binding documents, but consist of a series of standard phrases, mainly summarizing health and safety information collected, verified and peer reviewed by internationally recognized experts, taking into account advice from manufacturers and Poison Control Centres. MSDSs and the ICSCs are not the same. The MSDS, in many instances, may be technically very complex and too extensive for shop floor use, and secondly it is a management document. The ICSCs, on the other hand, set out peer-reviewed information about substances in a more concise and simple manner. While not a legal document, the ICSC is an authoritative document emanating from WHO/ILO/UNEP. http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ipcs/icstart.html International Standards and Guides for the Compilation of MSDS: A recent international standard was published by the ISO (International organization for Standardisation). This standard - "Safety Data Sheet for Chemical Products - Part 1: Content and order of sections" (ISO 11014-1) - specifically defines: (1) the general layout of MSDSs (2) 16 headings with standardised wording (3) the numbering and order of these headings (4) the information items required to complete an MSDS. The objective of this standard is to "create consistency in providing information on safety, health and environmental matters for chemical products". The 16 section MSDS headings in the ISO standard are essentially the same as those adopted previously by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the European Union (or European Communities), and the American National Standards Institute. This MSDS format is often called the ILO 16-heading format or the ANSI format