Developing a worldwide chemicals database: EU US and Canada make initial strides.

The US, Canada, and EU are about to start a pilot project that will test a system for exchanging data on substances and provide guidance on the potential development of a global database of information on chemicals led by the OECD.

Bob Diderich, head of the OECD's environmental health and safety division, said ‘’a pilot project has been agreed upon between North American countries and the EU that will test how the database and exchange of information could work internationally while speaking at Chemical Watch's Regulatory Summit Europe, held on September 26-27.’’

The International Uniform Chemical Information Database (IUCLID) of the EU will serve as its ‘core’. The OECD and ECHA together created IUCLID, an IT system that enables organizations to record, save, manage, and exchange data on the inherent and dangerous features of chemicals.

According to Mr. Diderich, IUCLID employs the OECD's harmonized templates (OHTs), which are standard data formats for reporting data used for chemical risk assessment. These have also been incorporated into the chemical information systems of other nations.

"Because IUCLID uses OECD standards for data exchange, more and more countries are interested in using IUCLID for their own regulatory processes," he said.

‘’It would therefore make sense for it to be the core of a global information system’, he added.

Mr. Diderich said, ‘the pilot project will help the OECD determine on what form its own vision for a database could take and will attempt to provide answers to questions like whether it will be a distributed system of national databases that communicate with one another or a centralized system that everyone contributes to.’

Mr. Diderich did not confirm when the project would begin.

The idea was first floated in 2018, and has support from the industry.