Toxicological Evaluations: Potential Health Hazards of Existing Chemicals

As part of its "Programme for the prevention of health hazards caused by industrial substances", the Berufsge­ nossenschaft der chemischen Industrie (BG Chemie, Em­ ployment Accident Insurance Fund of the Chemical Indus­ try) began in 1977 to investigate the toxicity of those chemicals which are widely used, have many different ap­ plications and are suspected of being dangerous to health, in particular of having long-term effects. The in­ vestigations consist of a literature search and - depending on the results - commissions of experimental studies. It is hoped by means of this testing to close gaps in our know­ ledge and to increase the scientific validity of the required risk assessments. The results of the toxicological in­ vestigations carried out by BG Chemie, and the resulting substance assessments have been published in German since 1987 in the form of 113 "Toxikologische Bewer­ tungen" ("Toxicological Evaluations") up to now. In order to make this useful information internation­ ally available, BG Chemie began in October 1990 to pub­ lish them as a book series in English, of which the fifth vol­ ume (containing 12 individual evaluations) is presented here. Therefore for 72 existing chemicals "Toxicological Evaluations" are available in English at the moment, a fur­ ther 38 are in preparation and will be published soon.