Chemicals and their Functions Now Connected in the Data Commons

Michel Dedeo | August 2018 | Newsletter

Looking for a non-toxic surfactant for a new product formulation? Now you can search the Chemical Hazard Data Commons by chemical function and easily compare the toxicity profiles of your hits. Every chemical in commerce serves one or more functions, whether it’s a solvent, pesticide, chelating agent, fragrance, or preservative. We’re excited to announce the Data Commons now includes 11 sources of functional uses, and about 160,000 links associating specific chemicals with a functional use, product category, or product.

Functional use information is a critical part of Alternatives Assessment, along with chemical hazard information, as it links assessed chemicals to specific uses where they’ have proven effective. This can help product designers identify useful alternatives to hazardous ingredients.

In addition to being able to search by function to find chemicals, you can also start with a chemical and view all the functions and products associated with it. This latter option could be useful to researchers studying chemical exposure from products.

Your feedback is important

Healthy Building Network is releasing this feature in beta to give you a chance to explore and provide feedback while we continue its development. Our first priority is to refine and expand the search function. In the long term, our goal is to create a more comprehensive functional use framework to support cross industry alternatives assessments – in other words, to help users apply good chemical solutions from one industry to another.

Please provide your feedback in the Data Commons Requests/Ideas Discussion. Do you have suggestions for other functional use databases we could include? Drop us a note in the Database Suggestions.