Testing of online databases in the information system for environmental chemicals with a testset of 68 chemicals

Abstract As part of the research project “Information system for environmental chemicals” we tested 265 databases with the help of a testset of 68 environmentally relevant chemicals. The different groups of chemicals in the testset and their number of hits in our Databank of Databases on Environmental Chemicals (DADB) are shown. On top of the general difficulties in searching for information on chemicals there are considerable differences in using either bibliographic or numeric databases. The differences searching by chemical name or by CAS-Number are illustrated and discussed.