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 Industry) began in 1977 to investigate the toxicity of those chemicals which are widely used, have many different applications and are suspected of being dangerous to health, in particular of having long-term effects. The investigations consist of a lit­ erature search and -depending on the results -commissions of experimental studies. It is hoped by means of this testing to close gaps in our knowledge and to increase the scientific validity of the required risk assessments. The results of the toxicological investigations carried out by BG Chemie, and the resulting substance assessments have been published in German since 1987 in the form of 139 "Toxikologische Bewertungen" ("Toxicological Evaluations") up to now. In order to make this useful information internationally available, BG Chemie began in October 1990 to publish them as a book series in English, of which the seventh volume (containing 13 individual evaluations) is presented here. Therefore for 96 existing chemicals "Toxicological Evalu­ ations" are available in English at the moment, a further 43 are in preparation and will be published soon.