Maintenance and improvement of the database is carried out by the section Dangerous Goods Database in the BAM Division 3.1 Dangerous Goods Packaging. The section consists of chemical engineers and software developers.
The Division 3.1 Dangerous Goods Packaging belongs to Department 3 Containment Systems for Dangerous Goods. BAM is ideally placed to maintain the database since dangerous goods experts from various fields work here. Due to their contribution to regulations development committees, they have access to all relevant information and any current changes. They analyze and evaluate regulations and solve problematic cases rapidly, in co-operation with external colleagues from other German authorities if necessary.
Owing to BAM’s special competence, additional data and instruments are available in addition to the information contained in the regulations, such as
- Physicochemical data from the BAM Department 2 Chemical Safety Engineering which stem from the „Chemsafe“ database and are relevant for the classification of materials and for the use of containment systems for dangerous goods;
- Material compatibility data for metallic tank materials and polymeric sealing and liner materials – data which are also used for the material-related design type approval of tank containers by BAM;
- Additional entries: BAM has evaluated and classified more than 3,400 materials according to dangerous goods law which are not included in the dangerous goods lists of individual provisions – many of them are transported in tanks. The number of records in the database has meanwhile increased to over 9,500;
- About 30,000 additional evaluated synonyms as well as CAS numbers which also makes the search for certain dangerous goods straightforward for non-chemists;
- A integrated module for the preparation of transport documents which are necessary for dangerous goods transportation as accompanying documents.