Developed in line with EU directives, Hungarian legislation pertaining to chemical safety -
Public Act No. XXV. of 2000 on Chemical Safety with its orders and other legal acts – is aimed to ensure people's basic constitutional rights to the highest possible level of physical and mental health and a healthy environment.
The legal setting created enabled the notion – first formulated in 1997 – come true according to which efficient and successful operation of chemical safety - being an intersectoral activity and serving the interests of the whole population - requires the establishment of
 a co-ordinating committee to function as a mediator between the line ministries, social organizations, and
 an information centre to provide information on chemical safety issues.
Setting up an Inter-departmental Committee with co-ordinating and other tasks has been ordained by Public Act No. XXV. of 2000 on Chemical Safety and Governmental Order No.
188/2000 associated with it.
The related regulations specify tasks of providing, processing and distributing data on chemical safety in details. It seems expedient to support the fulfilment of tasks with modernized information solutions permitting the development of an up-to-date information centre. With this end in view, the C hemical S afety I nformation S ystem (CSIS) has been established within the framework of the PHARE project HU9910-01-03.
The main objective inspiring the establishment of CSIS – in addition to enforcing the legislative intention – can be summarized as follows:

Procession and full-ranging intersectoral distribution, particularly within the borders of
Hungary, of information on chemical safety received from the international organizations and ministries.

Provision of IT support for giving prompt and accurate responses to the individual information requests on chemical safety coming from different organizations, ministries or the public.
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CSIS operates mainly as an information centre. It
 collects, stores, etc., data and documents on chemical safety…
 …processes those, then…
 …distributes the information processed to the concerned parties via different channels.
The following figure illustrates the main parties to the operational setting of CSIS:
NIEH
HTIS
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The majority of chemical safety tasks pertinent to registration, procession and information fall within the scope of activity of the National Public Health and Medical Officers’ Service
(NPHMOS), within this the authority of the Fodor József National Center for Public Health
(NCPH) and the National Institute of Chemical Safety (NICS) thereof. As a result, NCPH and
NICS are the main users of CSIS.
Some organizations, institutions of NPHMOS can be regarded as internal actors from the
CSIS point of view, while others outlined in the figure above as external actors. The forthcoming part gives a short description of the individual groups.
NCPH assumes responsibility for collecting, processing and publishing domestic and international data related to chemical safety. These tasks are co-ordinated by the Interdepartmental Committee on Chemical Safety located at NCPH. There are two institutes within the framework of NCPH that fulfil tasks in the field of chemical safety.

The National Institute of Environmental Health (NIEH-NCPH) provides technical assistance in the area of chemical safety by assessing environmental-health risks.

The National Institute of Chemical Safety (NICS) is engaged in several tasks pertaining to chemical safety. o The Information Centre processes and catalogues domestic and international data and documents. o The Health Toxicological Information Service (HTIS) under the conditions stipulated by law ensures a round-the-clock (24 hour) information supply based on the data and documents processed.
The need for medical guidance and advice in case of emergency called the
Poison Centre into life that can rely besides HTIS on the adult and paediatric toxicology expertise of different hospitals.
Municipal institutions of NPHMOS supervise how the companies under their authority perform tasks concerning prevention, data supply and other duties relating to chemical safety specified by law.
In addition to the authority control exercised in the area of chemical safety county institutions of NPHMOS assess environmental health risks with the professional support of NIEH-NCPH.
National and international organizations exchange information in paper and electronic format with CSIS.
Owing to the intersectoral nature of chemical safety certain ministries also manage some relevant tasks.
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Chemical safety activities undertaken by the ministries, NPHMOS and civil organizations are co-ordinated by the Inter-departmental Committee on Chemical Safety. The Interdepartmental Committee is assisted in its operational activities by a Secretariat located at
NCPH.
The clinical background for the Poison Centre is secured by two hospitals ensuring the necessary medical and toxicological expertise.
With respect to the public the essential and primary task is risk communication.
Services provided by CSIS can be grouped into four types:
 to support data provision by ensuring the notification obligation of the external data providers
 to support data processing by making possible to process notifications needed for the statistical reports and to digitise and catalogue documents received via different channels
 to support data publication by ensuring information supply through the web portal, the electronic newsletter and information service
 to support environmental health risk assessment by promoting the identification of potential health risks associated with chemicals and environmental pollutants.
A detailed explanation of the specific service types can be found in the forthcoming part.
The process of fulfilling notification obligations ordained by law in the area of chemical safety is shown in the figure below.
External Data supplier
Administrator
CSIS Database
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Data providers who may represent companies or health institutions can choose between three ways when submitting notification to the institution in charge.

The notification is submitted by traditional mail only, to be recorded by the administrator of the relevant institution.

The notification is submitted by electronic means, the printed notification form is sent by mail to the relevant institution so as to verify the authoritativeness, where the administrator registers the electronic version relying on the paper format notification.

An exclusive electronic notification with attested digital signature the registration of which is made by the user or without the user’s contribution.
The electronic data transmission is appropriate in terms of security (encrypted).
A special case of data transmission occurs when the output of the authoritive activities attained by the municipal and county institutes of NPHMOS is recorded and transmitted.
The data procession service type can be further divided into two subparts.

The notifications registered are processed for different statistical purposes by the relevant institutions with the assistance of CSIS.

Receiving and processing of domestic and international data is made up of the following subtasks: o Digitalizing the documents in paper format. o Translating the documents, as required. o Cataloguing documents and information digitalized, placing them onto the portal site of electronic documents, news or links.
Authorisation to access of the documents may be ensured.
This service type can be further divided into three subparts.

Information service, responding to all information requests submitted mainly by phone and partially in writing, relying on data and documents stored in CSIS.
CSIS records and stores telephone calls digitally. The devised facility allows the consultation to be extended into conference call including three of four persons as required.
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Web portal site functioning as the centre of CSIS in terms of informatics. It entrusted with two fundamental responsibilities. o Hungarian and English language chemical safety information Web site. o Services and functions of CSIS are to be reached starting from this site.
Availability of services is regulated via access authorisation.
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Opening page of the web site is illustrated below.
Electronic newsletter can be produced simply by using transactions usual with word processors.
The service guarantees the performance of activities prescribed by law through applying software packages of proved value.
NCPH-NIEH, IRAP and county institutions of NPHMOC use Risc-Human 3.1 software for carrying out environmental health risk assessment.
CSIS was mainly set up by customized development and partially by integrating out-of-the box softwares. The customized part of CSIS was implemented using up-to-date application development technology in web architecture.
During the development process great emphasis was given to conform with sectoral standars
(Java, XML). Due to this effort CSIS offer a flexible solution with regard to being explored, thus it is capable of adapting to continuously renewing requirements at an optimum level of investments.
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