Toward Product Safety and Circularity: Understanding the Information Structure of Global Databases on Chemicals in Products and ArticlesShow others and affiliations
2025 (English)In: Environmental Science and Technology, ISSN 0013-936X, E-ISSN 1520-5851Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]
Access to information about chemicals in products and articles is critical for supporting enforcement of chemical regulations, assessing risks from chemicals, allowing informed consumer choices, and enabling product circularity. In this work, we identified and evaluated available databases (DBs) on chemicals in products and articles from the literature using a defined protocol and from European national market surveillance authorities, nongovernmental agencies, and industrial sector groups using questionnaires. This is the first comprehensive review of DBs that provide information about chemicals in products and articles. A majority of these DBs are heterogeneous in terms of scope, ontologies, and data structures. Among the 57 identified DBs, 49 identified specific substances and only 30 reported their concentration in their products. In addition, 35 DBs included hazard information and 27 DBs provided safety information about products or chemicals. The analysis highlights the lack of comprehensive or accessible data on chemicals in products and articles for most categories of products/articles and jurisdictions. The limitations of existing DBs were attributed to scattered regulatory information requirements, a lack of data for unregulated substances, the complexity of supply chain communication, and confidentiality issues. In response to these challenges, we identified opportunities for improving existing information transfer structures and exploring alternative data sources to promote product and article safety and circularity. © 2025 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
American Chemical Society , 2025.
Keywords [en]
Databases, Factual; Chemical hazards; Chemical regulation; Compliance; Consumer choice; Enforcement; Global database; Information structures; National markets; Product-safety; REACH; Regulation; access to information; article; confidentiality; consumer; data base; human; market; ontology; product safety; questionnaire; factual database
National Category
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-78017DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.4c07992Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85216259006OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-78017DiVA, id: diva2:2000878
Note
This work was supported by Horizon Europe European Union Project 101057014 (PARC) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under GrantAgreement 857560 (CETOCOEN Excellence). This publication reflects only the authors’ view, and the European Commission and European Health and Digital Executive Agency (HADEA) are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. The authors thank the RECETOX Research Infrastructure (LM2023069) financed by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports for supportive background.
2025-09-252025-09-252025-09-25Bibliographically approved