Toxicology today runs on data — and increasingly, on open data. Whether you’re building a risk assessment, screening a chemical for further testing, or just trying to stay current on regulatory developments, a handful of public databases now do the heavy lifting. Here are six that belong in every toxicologist’s toolkit, with a focus on which ones let you actually download and work with the underlying data.

1. CompTox Chemicals Dashboard (US EPA)

🔗 https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/ The best general starting point for chemical hazard data. It brings together physicochemical properties, exposure data, in vivo toxicity, and in vitro bioassay results (including EPA’s high-throughput ToxCast program) for over a million chemicals. Crucially, it’s built for batch searching and bulk download — you can pull multiple data streams in several formats and take them straight into your own analysis pipeline, rather than reading results one chemical at a time.

2. ECHA (European Chemicals Agency)

🔗 https://echa.europa.eu/ The backbone of EU chemical regulation. REACH registration dossiers, the CLP classification and labelling inventory, and the Candidate List of Substances of Very High Concern are all accessible here, with bulk export options through ECHA’s dissemination portal. For anyone working within (or writing about) EU regulatory toxicology, this is non-negotiable.

3. OECD eChemPortal

🔗 https://www.echemportal.org/ A genuinely underrated resource: eChemPortal is a global search platform, developed by the OECD and hosted by ECHA, that lets you query chemical property, hazard, and classification data across nearly 20 government and international data sources in one place — including ECHA REACH data, OECD SIDS/IUCLID, and national programmes from Japan, the US, and others. As of early 2026 it covers over 1.6 million substances and more than 1.5 million individual data endpoints, spanning acute toxicity, sensitisation, repeated-dose toxicity, genetic toxicity, and carcinogenicity. If you need to cross-check a substance across multiple regulatory jurisdictions without hunting through each agency’s own portal, this is the fastest way to do it.

4. EFSA OpenFoodTox

🔗 https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/data-report/chemical-hazards-database-openfoodtox EFSA’s dedicated toxicological reference database for food- and feed-related substances. Fully downloadable and particularly useful for anything touching food safety, additives, or pesticide residues.

5. PubChem & ChEMBL

🔗 PubChem: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ 🔗 ChEMBL: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/ Two of the largest freely downloadable chemical structure and bioactivity databases, maintained by NCBI and EMBL-EBI respectively. Both cross-reference heavily with CompTox and eChemPortal, making them useful for filling in structural or bioactivity gaps, or for QSAR and read-across work.

6. NTP (National Toxicology Program) Database

🔗 https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ Study-level chronic and subchronic toxicity and carcinogenicity data — a strong resource for hazard identification, and a good complement to the more chemical-property-focused databases above.

Why this matters

None of these databases exist in isolation — the real value comes from combining them. A chemical’s DTXSID (CompTox), CAS number (eChemPortal, ECHA), and InChIKey (PubChem) can all be cross-walked to build a fuller picture than any single source provides alone. That’s exactly the kind of synthesis this hub aims to do: taking scattered, technical, high-quality data and turning it into insight you can actually use for a decision.

Have a database you rely on that isn’t listed here? Get in touch — we’re always looking to expand this list with what the community actually uses.