Toxicological Evaluations

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.