INCHEM international chemical safety cards and assessments
INCHEM holds international chemical safety cards and scientific assessments. Find a document, check its date, and keep the supplier SDS separate.
INCHEM is a free chemical-safety portal with thousands of searchable full-text documents on chemical risks, including International Chemical Safety Cards and scientific assessments. Use its cards and monographs alongside the applicable supplier safety data sheet (SDS), not instead of that SDS or a workplace risk assessment. It is produced through cooperation between the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) and the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS). The site is also called IPCS INCHEM.
The collections cover environmental, food and occupational exposure. You can search all of them, or one collection. WHO's chemical safety pages list the cards and link the IPCS INCHEM website. WHO is not the sole operator.
What INCHEM contains
INCHEM's notes separate workplace cards from scientific assessments. Pick the collection from the question you need answered.
| Document | Best starting point for | What it provides |
|---|---|---|
| International Chemical Safety Card (ICSC) | A workplace chemical-safety summary | Concise information on identity, hazards, prevention, first aid, storage and properties |
| Concise International Chemical Assessment Document (CICAD) | A focused scientific assessment | Peer-reviewed hazard and dose-response characterization, limited to what is critical for risk characterization |
| Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) monograph | A broader scientific evaluation | Properties, exposure, environmental fate, toxicity, and risk evaluation used in setting safety standards |
International Chemical Safety Cards give essential safety and health information for workers, and for people responsible for occupational safety and health. The project is a joint ILO/WHO activity, with European Commission cooperation. English preparation and scientific peer review come first. National institutions translate the cards after that. NIOSH helped initiate the ICSC effort and still takes part in all of the scientific peer-review meetings.
CICADs draw on selected national or regional evaluations, or on existing EHC monographs. The CICAD index is the list of those documents. A CICAD keeps information considered critical for risk characterization, not every study. Exposure examples are guidance only. They do not represent all possible exposure situations. Unless stated otherwise, the literature search runs to the date in the executive summary.
EHC monographs are an IPCS series for scientists and administrators who set safety standards and regulations. Read them as scientific evaluations. Do not treat an EHC or CICAD conclusion as a legal ban or a binding limit.
How to search INCHEM for a card or assessment
Start with the chemical identity, then pick the document type. The INCHEM search page filters by CAS number, chemical name or synonym, and collection.
- Search by chemical name, synonym or CAS number.
- Select ICSC for a workplace summary, or CICAD or EHC for a scientific assessment. A substance may be missing from one or more collections.
- Open the document. Match the name and identifiers to the substance in your records.
- Read the scope and the dates. For a CICAD, check the literature-search date in the executive summary unless the document says otherwise.
- For a workplace card, also open the ILO English ICSC database. Get the supplier SDS, and the current authority rules, separately: OSHA for the US duty, HSE for the UK duty.
Open the official document in the browser. Don't count on a PDF download for every card or monograph.
Benzene shows the identity check. Its INCHEM card is ICSC 0015, CAS 71-43-2, also named Benzol and Cyclohexatriene, with a November 2016 heading. Match those before you use the card. The benzene monograph is EHC 150, a 1993 WHO Geneva publication. That year does not set today's legal limit, and the report says the experts' views do not necessarily represent UNEP, ILO or WHO policy.
The same ILO database also searches by UN number, ICSC number and free text. A search hit is not proof you have the right substance.
Chemical safety cards versus safety data sheets
An international chemical safety card is a concise reference. It is not the supplier SDS. The supplier SDS covers that hazardous chemical or product, and the hazard-communication duty that applies to the supply. Neither document replaces the workplace assessment.
In the US, OSHA's Hazard Communication standard paragraph (g)(1) requires chemical manufacturers and importers to obtain or develop an SDS for each hazardous chemical they produce or import, and it requires employers to have an SDS in the workplace for each hazardous chemical they use. Paragraph (g)(2) sets the numbered section headings. That duty applies within the standard's scope. It is not a rule that every chemical, in every setting, has an SDS.
For UK supply, HSE says an SDS describes the hazards and gives handling, storage and emergency measures. Suppliers must provide an up-to-date SDS if a substance is dangerous for supply. HSE points that duty to REACH and chemical classification. An SDS is not a risk assessment. You use the sheet to help make your own. But US and UK duties are not interchangeable.
Check the document date before using it
An open page is not a recent scientific review. The ILO ICSC overview says existing cards are updated periodically, to take account of the latest scientific developments. It does not state an annual schedule.
Check the heading date.
The INCHEM benzene card shows November 2016 in the heading and a 2021 ILO and WHO copyright notice. The ILO copy shows the same pair. And the copyright year is not the scientific revision date. For a CICAD, read the literature cutoff in the executive summary as well as the publication year. The copyright line is the easy one to misread.
Before you apply an old exposure limit or classification, check the current competent authority and the supplier SDS. RegAffairs AI's answer on INCHEM and chemical safety cards sets out this document split and the SDS boundary.
INCHEM's disclaimer says the World Health Organization, on behalf of IPCS, and CCOHS do not warrant that the information is complete and correct. An old limit on a card stays reference material until that authority check is done.