Chemical databases evaluated by order theoretical tools

Data on environmental chemicals are urgently needed to comply with the future chemicals policy in the European Union. The availability of data on parameters and chemicals can be evaluated by chemometrical and environmetrical methods. Different mathematical and statistical methods are taken into account in this paper. The emphasis is set on a new, discrete mathematical method called METEOR (method of evaluation by order theory). Application of the Hasse diagram technique (HDT) of the complete data-matrix comprising 12 objects (databases) × 27 attributes (parameters + chemicals) reveals that ECOTOX (ECO), environmental fate database (EFD) and extoxnet (EXT)—also called multi-database databases—are best. Most single databases which are specialised are found in a minimal position in the Hasse diagram; these are biocatalysis/biodegradation database (BID), pesticide database (PES) and UmweltInfo (UMW). The aggregation of environmental parameters and chemicals (equal weight) leads to a slimmer data-matrix on the attribute side. However, no significant differences are found in the best and worst objects. The whole approach indicates a rather bad situation in terms of the availability of data on existing chemicals and hence an alarming signal concerning the new and existing chemicals policies of the EEC.Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available for this article at