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Unit Poison and Product Documentation Centre

The Unit receives notifications of formulations of chemical products and notifications of poisonings from physicians. The statutory foundations for this are the Chemicals Act (§ 16e ChemG) and the Detergents and Cleaning Agents Act (§10 WRMG).

Manufacturers/distributors of chemical products are obliged to make formulations available to BfR for the assessment and treatment of health impairments (§ 16e Abs. 1 ChemG). BfR regularly passes them on to the German poison information and treatment centres (GIZ) as support for their advisory activities.

Physicians report poisonings or cases of suspected poisoning in anonymised form (para 2) as soon as there are justified grounds for suspicion whereby the German GIZ are only obliged to provide BfR with information/annual reports (§ 16e Abs. 3 ChemG) about poisonings and substance-related cases of disease. In this way BfR is supplied with human data on a broad range of applications in the home, hobby, work and environmental areas.

Similar to the recording of adverse drug reactions, the Unit set up an information system in 1998 to record adverse health reactions caused by chemical products. In cases involving severe health disorders (except suicide, abuse), manufacturers/distributors, ministries and professional associations are informed by means of immediate notification. Manufacturers/distributors receive annual summary information about other health disorders. In this way BfR supports responsible care by manufacturers/distributors and contributes to improving product safety.

Rare intoxications, intoxications with a life-threatening course or with little manifestation of symptoms etc. are registered in a bilingual human casuistic database (German/English). The results are regularly published as an annual report with analyses, casuistic and toxicological topics (from 2004 in English, too). Other publications are brochures (for instance poisonous plants, poisonous mushrooms), press releases and reports of research projects or special human toxicological questions.

Main areas:

• Processing and passing on formulation notifications for chemical products
• Processing and evaluation of poisoning notifications by physicians
• Information to manufacturers/distributors about notified health impairments caused by their chemical products
• Maintenance of the product and case database
• Elaboration of casuistics and maintenance of casuistic database
• Secretariat of the BfR Committee "Assessment of Intoxications"
• Preparation of publications and brochures
• Representation of BfR in national and international bodies

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