Reactive chemical hedges: a search tool for comprehensive retrieval of chemical safety data

A step-by-step procedure has been developed for compiling search hedges and has been applied to the topic of reactive chemicals. Special problems encountered in compiling the reactive chemical hedges are presented, including improvements in processing efficiency and recall performance achieved by trimming the hedge with a controlled vocabulary. A reactive chemical value index has been developed and used to rank six chemical databases according to their safety content. From these rankings, new on-line sources have been identified for reactive chemical information.