Maintenance and improvement of the database is carried out by the section Dangerous Goods Database in BAM Division 3.1 Safety of Dangerous Goods Packagings and Batteries. The section consists of chemists and software developers.
Division 3.1 Safety of Dangerous Goods Packagings and Batteries belongs to Department 3 Containment Systems for Dangerous Goods; Energy Storage. 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 analyse and evaluate regulations and solve problematic cases, if necessary, in co-operation with external colleagues from other German authorities.
Due to BAM’s special competence, further data are additionally available to the information contained in the regulations, such as
- Additional entries: BAM has evaluated and classified more than 4,500 substances according to dangerous goods regulations which are not included in the dangerous goods lists - many of them are transported in tanks. The number of records in the database has meanwhile increased to over 10,300;
- About 58,000 additional evaluated synonyms as well as more than 4,600 CAS numbers and more than 3,800 EC numbers which also simplifiy the search for certain dangerous goods for non-chemists;
- Environmentally hazardous properties: Dangerous goods that are environmentally hazardous to the aquatic environment within the scope of the inland transport regulations ADR, RID and ADN have also to be marked with an environmentally hazardous substances mark. This also applies to dangerous goods in maritime transport (IMDG Code) for which no entry as a marine pollutant has been made in the dangerous goods list. For more than 5,200 substances in the Dangerous Goods Database, information is available on whether they are environmentally hazardous or not