Information Systems and Databases

The main objective of the European Commission’s White Paper on a future chemicals strategy (EEC 2001) is to facilitate the risk assessment of chemicals leading to, where necessary, risk reduction. Important roles play the chemical and environmental databases, which can be regarded as an information turnover. In this paper the emphasis lies on the evaluation of 12 numerical databases available on the free Internet, which focus on environmental fate and ecotoxicity as well as on high production volume chemicals. Hence we analyse a 12×27 data-matrix in the first place. Two multi-criteria evaluation and decision support instruments are applied: The Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT), a method derived from discrete mathematics, and the Method of Evaluation by Order Theory (METEOR). The original data-matrix of 12 databases (objects) and 27 parameters (attributes) will be subject to several logical aggregation steps. The aim of the aggregation procedure that can be performed by applying iteratively the Hasse Diagram Technique (HDT) is to get a unique prioritisation scheme. Significant data gaps even on the chosen well-known high production volume chemicals as well as on ecotoxicity and environmental fate parameters are identified by the chosen methods and weighting procedures. This indicates an alarming signal concerning the new existing chemicals policy of the EEC.

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