Developing foundational technologies to support open, computable safety data sheets.

The overall objective of this proposal is to develop the fundamental technologies and methods to build a future online platform to support a knowledge base of data and information contained in safety data sheets. Safety data sheets (introduced in mid-20th century) are static, textual documentation that communicates the hazards and safe handling of material entities in the workplace. By providing this information, occupational hazards and harmful exposure to chemical entities (e.g. carcinogens) can be mitigated. However, the safety data sheets that are authored by manufacturers are less than ideal – 1) reportedly containing inaccurate information; 2) missing vital information, 3) poorly regulated and reviewed; and 4) unusable for health providers and clinical researchers to treat patients exposed to harmful agents that are attributed to their chronic diseases. In order to fully inform and protect the modern workforce from chronic diseases, modernized approach in how we share and generate information and knowledge about chemical entities described in safety data sheets are needed. We intend to use well-known, cutting-edge informatics methods – ontologies and natural language processing (NLP)– that have continued success in the biomedical research domain and extend them to the domain occupational health to develop the foundational technologies for our proposed platform.