Toxicological Evaluations: Potential Health Hazards of Existing Chemicals

As part of its "Programme for the prevention of health haz- ards caused by industrial substances", the Berufsgenossen- schaft der chemischen Industrie (BG Chemie, Employment 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 hav- ing long-term effects. The investigations consist of a litera- ture 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 scientif- ic 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 169 "Toxikologische Bewertungen" ("Toxicological Evaluations") up to now. In order to make this useful information internationally available, BG Chemie began in October 1990 to publish as a book series in English, of which the eighth volu- them me (containing 14 individual evaluations) is presented here. Therefore for 110 existing chemicals "Toxicological Evalua- tions" are available in English at the moment, a further 54 are in preparation and will be published soon.