ECHA launches “plain English” toxicity guide

Online guide covers 120,000 everyday substances.

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has launched an online guide of chemical hazard profiles written in “plain English.”

The guide offers chemical safety information in three levels of detail: infocard, brief profile and detailed source data.

1. The infocard gives a summary of the key information on a chemical substance in plain English. Users can read about the chemicals they are exposed to, where they are commonly used, whether they are hazardous and the precautions that they might need to take.
2. The brief profile goes deeper into the environmental, human health and physico-chemical properties of the chemical. It provides a user-friendly overview of the information collected for each substance under the different chemical regulations. This will be most useful for employers, workers, academics and regulators.
3. The third level, source data, includes the raw data submitted by companies to ECHA in REACH registration dossiers and notifications to the classification and labelling inventory.

Geert Dancet, executive director of ECHA said, “ECHA is moving from collecting information to making much better use of it for the general public as well as for regulators throughout the world. This launch is an important step towards safer chemicals by 2020.”

More information can be found here.