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Chemicals policy and pollutants, REACH

Joint Substance Database Federation/Länder (GSBL)

Last changed: 15/06/2009

Up-to-date, comprehensive and reliable information on the environmental properties of chemical substances and preparations is of immense importance for all areas of environmental protection and for averting danger. The GSBL (Gemeinsamer zentraler Stoffdatenpool Bund/Länder) is a joint database of chemical substances designed to make such information uniformly available. It is operated by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and the environment ministries of the Länder(Federal States) on the basis of an administrative agreement of 1994 PDF / 53 KB, in German).

Content of GSBL

GSBL provides a catalogue with a wide range of attributes of chemical substances. It contains data and information on physical and chemical properties, toxicological and ecotoxicological parameters, descriptions of environmental hazards, dangers to health, fire and other technical hazards, and information on substance-related contents of relevant legislation.

The GSBL provides data from many suppliers, for example: substance data from the Federal Ministry of Environment (Bundesumweltministerium - BMU) and the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt - UBA), data on hazardous goods from the Federal Ministry of Transport (BMV) and the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM), as well as substance data from the North Rhine-Westphalia Environment Agency, the Data Pool of the Federal States (GDL), the Fire Department and the Environmental Authority of Hamburg.

The GSBL provides a range of software modules (GSBL SoftwareSuite) for visualisation of the data and information stored in the database. These modules provide the functionalities to collect, maintain, update and search information within the GSBL. The software has a modular design and is based on a flexible technical data model. A standardised GSBL interface guarantees a seamless exchange of data between software modules and with the numerous data providers with their heterogeneous data models.

The full current version and thus all the 60,000 pure substances, 320,000 component substances and 190,000 contents of relevant legislation are accessible for registered users.

Decisions for the GSBL are taken by a steering committee in accordance with the administrative agreement between the federal and state governments. It regulates the financing to be split fifty-fifty between the federation and the states. A central coordination office has been set up at the UBA (Section IV 2.1), responsible for coordinating the data flow between the projects partners, carrying out the yearly work programme, compliance with quality control guidelines and for the annual GSBL budget.

Users of the GSBL

police offices may use the GSBL for fast and reliable information on the risks posed by dangerous goods in transports by ship or road;
fire brigades are offered reliable information in case of a fire involving hazardous materials or the release of such materials.;
environmental authorities at all administrative levels use GSBL data in functions related to labour inspections, occupational safety and health, and handlung and disposal of hazardous materials
government may use information to assess existing and draft new legislation.

Note:

A subset of data from the GSBL is accessible to the public. ”GSBL-Public” is available via the German Environmental Information Portal Umweltportal Deutschland PortalU or directly at www.gsbl.de

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