The newborn OpenFoodTox is the new database of the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), that gives immediate access to the information of the more than 1650 scientific documents on the toxicity of the chemicals present in the food and animal feed chain[1].
An editorial published on Efsa Journal explains how to use this database, that offers information about beyond 4000 chemical substances, on the referring EU legislation, on the Efsa’s scientific documents that describe the critical effects and the safety levels established by the group of scientific experts of the Agency.
All of those information were, actually, already available for public consultation, but, until now, you were supposed to check between beyond 2000 different conclusions and scientific opinions. OpenFoodTox allows instead to have a fast and easy access to those information, in a synthesized way.
The substances in this database belong to the different areas where Efsa has to evaluate the chemical risks: pesticides, food additives, flavorings and food sources, additives for animal food and artificial or natural contaminants.
So, it doesn’t only contain information on the critical effects on health to evaluate the risks for the humans, but also for farming animal, for pets and for ecologically important species like fishes and bees.
Nowadays, it is possible to access to the database through the Scientific Data Warehouse of Efsa, but, probably, it will also be soon available a smartphone app to access in an easier and more dynamic way to those data.
