CAS Chemical Safety Library™
Access a free database of hazardous reaction information from global academic, industry, and government institutions to enhance chemical safety in your laboratory.
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About the CAS Chemical Safety Library
The CAS Chemical Safety Library is a repository for the scientific community to capture and confidentially share hazardous reaction information from real-world laboratory experiences to reduce and prevent incidents. Information in the library is publicly available and uploaded to PubChem.
The repository is overseen by an advisory panel made up of experts from CAS, ACS, and academic, industry, and non-profit organizations worldwide.
Prior to September 1, 2023, the Chemical Safety Library was created and maintained by Pistoia Alliance.
The use of dangerous chemicals in the laboratory can lead to major risks. To prevent related disasters, hazardous reaction incident information must be shared across the global research community. With the CAS Chemical Safety Library:
Search
Learn about hazardous reaction information before you head to the laboratory. Search by CAS Registry Number®, chemical name, SMILES, and more.
Contribute
Help make the library even more valuable to other researchers by submitting your hazardous reaction incident information.
Download
Integrate hazardous reaction information from the library with your internal workflows and knowledge bases.
Chemical Safety Library timeline
A presentation by Mark Manfredi (Bristol Myers Squibb) at ACS Fall 2016, “Ensuring That Lessons Learned Are Not Forgotten, Leveraging ELN to Transform the Safety Paradigm”, inspired the idea for a simple crowd-sourced hazardous reaction data collection system. Further championed by Ramesh Durvasula (Lilly), the Pistoia Alliance led the development of the Chemical Safety Library.
Hazardous reaction information from Bristol Myers Squibb was added to the Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library, which was then expanded through datathons, hackathons, and data extraction from C&EN Safety Letters and other sources.
A simplified submission system helped the Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library reach 138 records. Data was made available to users through .csv file requests and the entire library was shared with PubChem (National Library of Medicine).
CAS began hosting the Pistoia Alliance Chemical Safety Library and established the Advisory Panel, chaired by Carmen Nitsche (The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre) and Mark Manfredi (Bristol Myers Squibb) to drive future development. A strategic partnership with the Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association (CSHEMA) was also established and extended outreach to academia. A reusable data collection protocol (Chemical Safety Library in a Box) was developed through data mining projects with Purdue University and the University of Minnesota.
Chemical Safety Library in a Box was deployed at UCLA and promoted at CSHEMA Safety Week. In March, a datathon was hosted at ACS Spring 2024 to expand the information collection. The resource was officially renamed “CAS Chemical Safety Library” after ownership was transferred from the Pistoia Alliance to CAS. Today, the CAS Chemical Safety Library includes more than 500 records.
CAS Chemical Safety Library™ Advisory Panel
The CAS Chemical Safety Library is overseen by an advisory panel of experts from CAS and others in the commercial, academic, and non-profit sectors.
George Athens
Dow
Katie Mulligan
Dow
Christopher Kolodziej
University of California, Los Angeles
Meghan Lafferty
University of Minnesota
Kimi Brown
SciShield
Chengjian Zhu
Nanjing University
Gabrielle Whittick
GMW Consulting
Eric Margelefsky
Merck
Amanda Smeigh
CAS
Qiong Yuan
CAS
The CAS Chemical Safety Library Advisory Panel also recognizes contributions from:
Michael Dennis
CAS
Grace Baysinger
Stanford University (Emerita)
Kathy Gibson
Helio Consulting
Becky Upton
Pistoia Alliance
Carmen Nitsche
The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre
Alison Frontier
University of Rochester
Ramesh Durvasula
Eli Lilly and Company
Ralph Stuart
(A groundbreaker in EHS and leader in ACS passed away on December 6, 2023)
Mark Manfredi
Bristol Myers Squibb (Emeritus)
Thomas Vickery
Merck (Emeritus)
For questions about the CAS Chemical Safety Library, email csladvisorypanel@cas.org.
