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Summary
Every year, chemists invent thousands of new chemicals, and many eventually find their way into the global use. Predicting which ones pose risks to health or the environment, however, has proven difficult. This week, a group of researchers unveiled a tool that could help streamline the process a large database of safety information that will allow users to compare new chemicals to existing compounds with similar structures, and risks potential flag. "You can imagine that, even before the synthesis of [a chemical], a chemist puts the structure in the [tool] to ask if it is safe," says toxicologist Thomas Hartung of public health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Baltimore, Maryland, who led the effort. to create the screening tool, researchers have dug deep into a "gold mine" of data on 9800 compounds collected by the European chemicals Agency. But the experts warn that structural similarities, although promising, are only one piece of the puzzle in the safety assessment of a compound.
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