The Pistoia Alliance, a not for profit organization working to improve collaboration in the life sciences industry, has started work on the Chemical Safety Library, a project which will allow for the capture and sharing of previously inaccessible reaction incident information to enhance laboratory safety.
The Chemical Safety Library will serve as a resource to allow all organizations to effectively share chemistry-related incident reports, delivering value from real life incidents and sharing lessons-learned.
Information on adverse events that took place in the past or in another organization are difficult to access when planning new experiments, leading to the potential for repeat occurrences. The Library data will be collected in a publicly available central resource, with rule sets and triggers which can be tied to scientists’ reaction planning tools, to mitigate safety incidents via better information-sharing.
Through collaboration across the industry and with publishers and suppliers, the Chemical Safety Library will leverage the incident system to define and promote standards to make more traditional hazard information more actionable as well.
“Chemical safety is something the industry takes very seriously and risks are carefully minimized through regulation and good safety practices, but there is still the risk of unexpected adverse incidents,” said Dr. Steve Arlington, President of the Pistoia Alliance. “As the industry relies on experimentation to develop new products, there is no way to eliminate risks entirely, but through the Chemical Safety Library researchers can begin sharing previously inaccessible information on potentially hazardous activities and improve chemical safety for all.”
The launch of the Chemical Safety Library builds on the success of the Pistoia Alliance’s other ongoing projects, Hierarchical Editing Language for Macromolecules (HELM) and the Controlled Substances Compliance Services (CSCS) Expert Community, both of which have seen widespread adoption of their outputs throughout the life sciences sector.
