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The bottle on the bench

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The sentence Condition one, portable Condition two, immediate use Condition three, the same employee And it must come from a labeled container What a labeled workplace container carries Which is a real second option So the practical answer is to label it anyway This is a workplace rule Which is the useful framing for a supplier References

Portable, immediate use, and the same person who poured it. Miss any one and the exemption is gone.

The sentence

"The employer is not required to label portable containers into which hazardous chemicals are transferred from labeled containers, and which are intended only for the immediate use of the employee who performs the transfer."

Condition one, portable

A container you carry to the work, not a container the work comes to. A squeeze bottle is portable; a jug that lives on a shelf being drawn from all week is not behaving like one.

Condition two, immediate use

Intended only for immediate use. A bottle filled for the job in front of you is inside it. A bottle filled on Monday and still there on Thursday is not, whatever it was intended for when it was filled.

Condition three, the same employee

The employee who performs the transfer. The moment somebody else picks it up, the exemption does not reach it, and that is the condition most often missed because it is the least intuitive.

And it must come from a labeled container

Transferred from labeled containers. A decant from an unlabeled drum is not covered, because the problem started upstream.

What a labeled workplace container carries

Either the full label information, or the product identifier plus words, pictures or symbols giving at least general information about the hazards, working with the rest of the hazard communication program.

Which is a real second option

A shop can run a system of its own, provided the rest of the program supplies the specifics. That is a deliberate flexibility rather than a loophole, and it only works if the program behind it exists.

So the practical answer is to label it anyway

The exemption covers a bottle in your hand for the next hour. Anything that outlives the task is cheaper to label than to argue about, and a label is a few cents.

This is a workplace rule

It reaches employers and employees. A one-person shop and a home garage are a different question, and the hazards are identical even where the duty is not.

Which is the useful framing for a supplier

Sell the bottle and the label together. The most common failure in this whole property is a correctly chosen container with nothing written on it.

References

29 CFR 1910.1200(f)(8): "The employer is not required to label portable containers into which hazardous chemicals are transferred from labeled containers, and which are intended only for the immediate use of the employee who performs the transfer." Paragraph (f)(6) sets what a workplace container carries otherwise: either the full label information, or the product identifier plus "words, pictures, symbols, or combination thereof, which provide at least general information regarding the hazards of the chemicals" and which work together with the rest of the hazard communication program. osha.gov

Written from 29 CFR 1910.106(d)(2) and Table H-12, 29 CFR 1910.1200(f) and Appendix B Table B.6.1, and from the catalog as it stood on 18 October 2026. Nothing here establishes that a container is an approved container for flammable liquid storage, which is a word the regulation uses and our data does not support. Fire codes, state plans and insurers sit on top of all of this.