Hazardous Chemical and Biological Tool

 Audio Podcast available at the bottom of this post or on itunes.
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  • 0:21 The URL for the hazardous materials database
  • 2:57 Benefits of this database

Quotables:
“A great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home” – Tony – Click to Tweet

If you’ve ever struggled with getting information about chemical or biological hazards, then I have found a great online database so you can work out what could be dangerous in your workplace and your home, and what to do about it.

If you are listening to the podcast I recommend you follow along with the website, which is called hazmap.nlm.nih.gov

Chemical Hazard and gas MaskThis is a great tool because by just selecting a few icons, you can drill down to the chemical that you may have in your home or workplace, but don’t know how to manage. The orgnsitions that have put this together are credible and the links of chemicals and other diseases are based on scientific evidence. What that means is you get a lot of brain power in the background with an easy to easy interface.

Let’s do an example, starting with the home page., and I’ll click on High Risk Jobs. On then select alphabetically or by job type. So I’ll pretend I have business in farming, and then select  [Farming, Fishing and Forestry Workers, All Others].

The description is pretty obvious in this case but for other jobs, there are more detailed descriptions. It’s important there is minimal confusion here as the information below relates to the work described in this description, so have a wick read of the description to make sure you are looking at the right task!

Now we can scroll down and look at the type of tasks in the job – [Handle infected animal carcasses or placental tissues]

And now we find we are exposed to a number of pathogens which causes a number of diseases. So what, let say we want to find out about preventing these, and starting with Anthrax. And in this case we find another link to a great website and everything you wanted to know about Anthrax.

What I like about this database of links is that they are linked to credible sources of information, all form the one place. You don’t need to navigate through Google and get all the opinions etc around the world – a one stop shop for chemical and biological information. Thus will really help you confirm or put in place hazard management procedures based upon quality information.

If you know of any other tools please share in the comments below, Cheers.