CHEMICAL GUIDANCEBetween Habitable’s Pharos database and our partner ChemFORWARD you will be empowered to make more informed decisions about the chemicals contained in your products—and the impact that they have on human and planetary health.
Toxic chemical exposure is preventable.
Habitable is reversing decades of negative impacts of toxic chemicals that have burdened our products, our economy, our environment, and our bodies.
We can solve this by preventing the use and presence of hazardous chemicals in everyday products and uncovering safer alternatives for substitution.
By organizing, interpreting, and scaling access to chemical hazard data, we will stop the unknowing use of toxic chemicals and shift the supply chain to make informed decisions using safer chemistry in the design phase.
Pharos is the industry’s most comprehensive, independent database of chemicals, polymers, metals and their associated human and environmental health hazards. Over the past 15 years, Pharos has become the must-have resource empowering manufacturers, scientists, and academia to save time and money by making safer and healthier chemical decisions.
The chemical industry is the second largest manufacturing industry globally, exceeding $5 trillion in 2017.
Production increased 50-fold since 1950 and is projected to triple again by 2050.
There are an estimated 350,000 chemicals (or mixtures of chemicals) on the global market today. Nearly 70,000 (20%) have been registered in the past decade.
Habitable researchers continuously monitor sources to ensure Pharos users see the most up-to-date information.
Pharos is an approved GreenScreen Automator, scoring all chemicals in the database against the GreenScreen List Translator to identify chemicals of high concern.
Access CASRN, SMILES notations, structure, INCI names, compound groups, and physical properties. Comparisons let you see the roll-up scores and hazard summary tables of multiple chemicals in one quick view, which is useful for identifying safer alternatives.
Search by chemicals’ functional use, like solvents, pesticides, chelating agents, fragrances, or preservatives. Pharos provides access to all publicly available chemical hazard assessments. These toxicological assessments evaluate the inherent hazards of chemicals across a broad range of health outcomes.
Resources tab provides links to information on that chemical in other databases that cover topics such as release, contamination, chemical manufacturing, and more. Links include PubChem, ChemIDPlus, OECD eChemPortal, ECHA, and HBN’s own research reports.
Compare hazards of common chemicals, identify the most toxic, and find safer alternatives. Get alerts anytime a new hazard is added, so you’re always first to know about toxic threats.
Learn how consumer goods companies and university educators are using Pharos data to accelerate their impact.
Access a community of manufacturers, scientists, and academics that you can troubleshoot concerns and crowdsource solutions with.
We don’t expect every manufacturer to become a chemical expert—that’s what we’re here for!
Pharos can help you quickly identify chemicals of concern and find safer alternatives, so you can future-proof your products.
Identifying chemical hazards can be difficult.
But Pharos makes it easier by allowing scientists to compare hazard data from hundreds of sources, and easily filter them by class and function.
Prepare the next generation to make healthier choices by demonstrating how to research and compare chemical hazards.
While restricted substances lists indicate what not to use, they don’t always help you figure out what to use instead. You need a comprehensive chemical hazard assessment to answer this.
ChemFORWARD centralizes the Pharos dataset and thousands of chemical hazard assessments into a shared repository to scale access to comprehensive chemical hazard data.
ChemFORWARD’s chemical hazard and safer alternatives repository is populated and continually updated by licensed toxicologists using a comprehensive, globally accepted methodology. Chemical hazard assessments are all peer-reviewed by independent toxicologists before being posted.
Each comprehensive chemical hazard assessment includes 24 human and environmental endpoints, routes of exposure, and classification rationales for each endpoint. The chemical is then assigned a roll-up hazard band for actionable decision making.
