European Groups Team Up With IBM

The European Chemical Industry Council and five of its members—the chemical associations of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K.—have launched a new initiative, ReachLink, to facilitate the registration of chemicals under REACH, the European Union's program to register, evaluate, and authorize chemicals. Under REACH, around 30,000 substances will have to be registered with the European Chemicals Agency by 2018. Key to ReachLink is SIEFreach, a software tool developed by IBM to ease cooperation among companies that have been assigned to substance information exchange forums, or SIEFS. The forum concept was devised by the EU to minimize chemical testing, particularly on animals, by assigning all producers of a given chemical to one SIEF in which companies will exchange safety and toxicology data.