CAS launches free web-based resource for non-chemists - 15 May 2009

 Chem­i­cal Abstracts Ser­vice (CAS), a divi­sion of the Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety, has launched a new, free, web-based resource called Com­mon Chem­istry. This resource is help­ful to non-chemists and oth­ers who might know either a chem­i­cal name or a CAS Reg­istry Num­ber of a com­mon every­day chem­i­cal and want to pair both pieces of information.

Com­mon Chem­istry con­tains nearly 7,800 chem­i­cals of wide­spread and gen­eral inter­est, as well as all 118 ele­ments from the peri­odic table. With the excep­tion of some of the ele­ments, all other sub­stances in this col­lec­tion were deemed of wide­spread inter­est by hav­ing been cited 1,000 or more times in the CAS databases.

While not intended to be a com­pre­hen­sive CAS Reg­istry Num­ber (CAS RN) lookup ser­vice, Com­mon Chem­istry does pro­vide access to infor­ma­tion on chem­i­cals of gen­eral inter­est. The CAS Reg­istry Num­ber is recog­nised through­out the world as the most com­monly used, unique iden­ti­fier of chem­i­cal sub­stances. The full CAS REGISTRYSM data­base con­tains more than 46 mil­lion organic and inor­ganic sub­stances. Research dis­cov­ery and patent tools such as SciFinder and STN allow users to search the entire database.

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak Newslet­ter &  CAS.

Note:  Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library sub­scribes to the com­plete CAS Chem­i­cal Abstracts and Reg­istry data­base — avail­able as SciFinder Scholar.