1.5.2 On-line help – Total use

1.5.2      On-line help – Total use

The tab called “Total use” gives you an overview of the total use of the selected substance. When you first enter the tab, it will show you the data from all contributing countries from all the reported years, respectively. By pressing one of the button-shaped headings “Country” or “Year”, you can get a more specific view. To learn more about specific selection of “use data” please see section “1.4.1 Selecting specific “use data” on the screens” in the SPIN guide.

Country:

The countries that has contributed to SPIN with data from their national product registers are:

• NO: Norway
• SE: Sweden
• DK: Denmark
• FI: Finland.

There are no product register data from Iceland.

Year:

Data are reported to SPIN on a yearly basis. The data reflects the current status of the substance in that particular year in the reporting country.

# preparations:

Number of preparations is the total registered count of preparations containing the substance in the particular year in the reporting country.

Tonnes:

“Tonnes” represents the total registered volume of the substance in the particular year in the reporting country. The volume is calculated as production volume + imported volume – exported volume. If the value is “0.0” it means that the volume is below the limit of accuracy, which is 100 kg. If the value is negative, the exported volume exceeds the total of production and import volumes in the year in question.

Please note that there are no Finnish volumes from the years 1999 and 2000, because Finland cannot report information about volumes earlier than year 2001.

Consumer preparations:

An “X” in this column marks that the substance is registered in preparations for consumer use. Only Sweden has the ability of reporting this kind of information.

Confidential:

A “Yes” in this column marks that data are not available for reasons of confidentiality. Generally, data are kept confidential if the substance is a component in less than 4 preparations from less than 3 producers. Please refer to section “2.11 Uncertainties” under the “2. General info” tab in the SPIN guide for further information about confidentiality.

If the field is blank and #preparations and Tonnes are blank too, the substance has no data from the particular year in the reporting country. This is the case for substances which are reference substances or components in other substances. Please refer to section “1.6.5 On-line help – References” in the SPIN guide for further explanation.

1.5.1 On-line help – Main Info

1.5.1      On-line help – Main Info

The tab called “Main info” contains the most important information for substance identification, but to make navigation in SPIN easier, the CAS-name, the CAS-No. and the EC-No. of the substance are repeated on all tabs.

CAS-No.:

Since 1907, Chemical Abstract Service, CAS, has indexed and summarized chemistry-related articles from more than 40,000 scientific journals, in addition to patents, conference proceedings and other documents pertinent to chemistry, life sciences and many other fields. In total, abstracts for more than 21 million documents are accessible online through CAS.

When a chemical substance is newly encountered in the literature processed by CAS, its molecular structure diagram, systematic chemical name, molecular formula, and other identifying information are added to the CAS Registry and assigned a unique CAS Registry Number, the CAS-No. The CAS Registry contains records for more than 20 million organic and inorganic substances and more than 23 million sequences.

CAS Registry Numbers are used in reference works, databases, and regulatory compliance documents by many organizations around the world to identify substances without the ambiguity of chemical nomenclature.

You can learn more about the Chemical Abstract Service at the homepage http://www.cas.org

EC-No.:

The EC-number is created by the European Commission and is used to arrange the substances used within the E.C. among 3 regulatory lists. Numbers in the interval 200-001-8 – 310-312-1 comes  from EINECS (European Inventory of Existing Commercial Chemical Substances), numbers in the interval 400-010-9 – 499-999-8 comes from ELINCS (European List of Notified Chemical Substances) and numbers in the interval 500-001-0 – 599-999-9 comes from NLP (No Longer Polymers). In general it is not legal within the E.C. to use a substance that has no EC-No. in a commercial product, unless the substance is a polymer.

You can learn more about the legislation concerning new chemicals at the homepage http://ecb.jrc.it/new-chemicals

Names:

This section contains chemical names with different name codes:

• The name next to “CAS” is the preferred chemical name from the Chemical Abstract Service Registry, the CAS-name.
• The name next to “PRN” is the preferred Norwegian chemical name.
• The name next to “PRD” is the preferred Danish chemical name.
• The name next to “FIN” is the preferred Finnish chemical name.

There are no specially preferred names in SPIN from Sweden and Iceland.

Administrators note:

The database administrator of SPIN can add a special note about the substance in this section. The data cannot be updated by ordinary users.

1.5 On-line help

1.5.1  On-line help – Main info

1.5.2  On-line help – Total use

1.5.3  On-line help  – Industrial use

1.5.4  On-line help  – Use by category

1.5.5  On-line help – References

1.5.6  On-line help – Technical

1.4.1 Selecting specific “use data” on the screens

1.4.1      Selecting specific “use data” on the screens

On the 5 tabs with “use data”, “use data” is data about the use of a substance in preparations,  you can select “use data” from specific countries, years and codes by clicking on the column headings that are shaped like buttons. The 5 tabs with “use data” are “Total use”, “Industrial use (NACE)”, “Industrial Use”, “Use by category (UC62)” and “Use by Category”. On the “Total use” tab the active column headings are “Country” and “Year”, while on the “Industrial use (NACE)”, “Industrial Use”, “Use by category (UC62)” and ” Use by Category” tabs also the “Code” heading is active.

Clicking one of the active column headings activates a drop down menu from which you respectively can choose among countries, years or codes represented within the data volume.

When for instance a country is chosen, only the present data coming from that specific country is shown. To return to the full set of data, you simply click on the red text on the tab.

1.4 Using the SPIN data

1.4.1 Selecting specific “use data” on the screens

1.3.4 Searching in SPIN – using names and chemical numbers

1.3.4      Searching in SPIN – using names and chemical numbers

As earlier described in “1.3.1 Searching in SPIN”, a search based on full or partial chemical names can be quite an efficient way to find specific and/or related groups of substances. If however, you already know the CAS-No. of the specific substance of your interest, the most efficient way of finding the substance record is to use the CAS-No. as the search criteria.

If instead, you know the EC-No. or the Index No., you could use one of these instead. The CAS- and EC-No.’s are accessible for searching within the “Main info” and the “Reference” tabs, while the Index-No. is only accessible within the tab called “Technical”. Please note, that SPIN makes no distinction between chemical numbers written with or without a hyphen, “-“.

In the internet version of SPIN the CAS- and EC-No.’s can be searched numerically. This makes it possible to use the information within the EC-No. when you are searching. If for instance you would like to see all the EINECS-substances registered in SPIN, you simply search for “less than 400*”, where the “*” is used as a wildcard allowing the numbers written after “400” to vary freely. For more information about EINECS please refer to “1.6.1 On-line help – Main Info”.

1.3.3 Searching in SPIN – using operators and ranges

1.3.3      Searching in SPIN – using operators and ranges

When you are working with SPIN, the fields “CAS-No.”, “EC-No.”, “Year”,

“Total use”, “Tonnes”, “Code” and “#prep” are accessible for numerical searching. Because a numerical search often gives you a lot of hits, the 5 use data tabs “Total use”, “Industrial use (NACE)”, “Industrial Use”, “Use by category (UC62)” and “Use by Category” are specially designed, so that searching within one of these tabs brings you directly to a list of records. In order to speed up the searching process, you can choose to limit the number of records presented on each “page” of the list.

Specific country and specific year can be selected from drop down menus. If nothing is selected, data from all countries and all years are shown. Numerical search criteria such as number of preparations and tonnes are filled into the blanked fields. Numerical operators and ranges are limited to “equals”, “not equals”, “greater than”, “greater or equal to”, “less than” or “less or equal to” all chosen from the same type of numerical drop down menu. Only one of these ranges can be chosen for each specific, numerical parameter. It is not possible to combine them.

When you have pressed the “Search” button and the search result appears as a list, you can move on to the next “page” of the list by using the arrows in the top. If you press the button “Close list” you will loose the search result and return to the ordinary viewing mode. From the list it is possible to select the record of the substance of your particular interest by simply pressing the underlined CAS-No.

1.3.2 Searching in SPIN – using special characters

1.3.2      Searching in SPIN – using special characters

When you are working with SPIN on the internet, you can search for all kinds of special characters, such as hyphens “-“, brackets “)(” or numbers “2,4,6”, just by writing them in the searchable text fields, when you are in the search mode. If for instance you are looking for all the substances with 3 substituents in the 1-position, you simply type “1,1,1” in the “Name” field and press the “Search SPIN” button.

1.3.1 Searching in SPIN

1.3.1      Searching in SPIN

When you are working with SPIN, you are always working with the entire data volume, when you are searching. You can press the “Show all” button if you want to see all data, but you do not necessarily have to press it before you start searching.  The search function works through a search mode. By pressing the “Search” button, the search mode is activated, and all searchable fields in the actual tab or window that you are working in are blanked. You can navigate between the activated fields on the actual tab by pressing the tabulator key.

When you are in search mode there is a drop down menu next to each of the searchable fields. To carry out the search, you simply fill in search criteria in one or more of the activated fields, select the conditions in the corresponding drop down menu and press the  “Search SPIN” button. Then the search will be carried out to find the registrations that meet all the criteria you have entered. Please note that you can only enter search criteria in the activated fields of the actual tab you are working with when you entered the search mode. Changing tab while beeing in the search mode brings you back to the viewing mode.   The searchable data fields in SPIN can either be numeric strings or text strings. The fields accessible for numerical searching are “CAS-No.”, “EC-No.”, “Year”, “Total use”, “Tonnes”, “Code” and “#prep”. All other searchable fields are text strings. To learn more about numerical searching please refer to “1.3.3 Searching in SPIN – using operators and ranges”. If you select the condition “equals” and for instance enter “aluminium” in the “Name” field, you will get all the substances that contains “aluminium” as an isolated word in one of their names, such as “OXO-(STEARATO)-ALUMINIUM, HOMOPOLYMER” or “Aluminium hydroxide sulfate”. If you select “not equals” instead, you will get all the substances that do not contain “aluminium” as an isolated word in one of their names. A word is defined as alphanumeric characters in a string divided from other strings by any special character as space, parenthesis, comma, hyphen etc. Please note that the search function does not make any distinction between upper- and lower-case.   If you fill in “alumi” in the “Name” field and select “contains”, you will get the records of all substances that contains the text “alumi” or “ALUMI” as a part of a word in the name of one of their synonyms, for instance the aluminates. Selecting “does not contain” will bring you the opposite result.   If you select one of the conditions “begins with” or “ends with” and fill in “alumi” in the “Name” field, you will get all the substances that contains isolated words in one of their names, that either begins or ends with “alumi”.   When you have finished a search within one of the tabs “Main info”, “References” or “Technical”, the number in the far right of the heading will tell you how many substances you have found. The records of the found substances are “stacked” with the record of the substance with the lowest CAS-No. in the top. You can look through the found records by pressing the arrows in the right of the heading or you can press the “List” button to overview the names and the CAS-No.’s of all the found substances. From the list it is possible to select the record of the substance of your particular interest by simply pressing the underlined CAS-No. From the selected record you can return to the list by simply pressing the “List” button again.

1.3 Using the SPIN application

1.3      Using the SPIN application

In general the SPIN application is a database containing information about chemical substances. Each record corresponds to a specific substance and is divided into tabs with different kinds of information about the specific substance. You can navigate between the records by using the arrows in the right side of the SPIN header. The “one-arrow”-buttons are used for turning back and forth between the records one by one, while the “double-arrow” buttons brings you to the first or the last record respectively. The number just right to the arrows shows the total number of records, and if you push the “List” button you will get a total list of them all.

Pushing the “Guide” or the “Reports” button opens the guide or the report window. You can learn more about the guide and the reports from the section “1.1 Using the SPIN guide” and the respective sections about reports (1.7.1, 1.7.2 and 1.7.3). Pushing the “Exit” button finishes the session and closes down the SPIN application.

When you are working with a specific record, you can change between tabs by simply pressing them or using the tabulator key. Inside each tab you switch between data fields by simply pressing them. Pressing the “Help” button in the far right of the SPIN header opens a window with information relevant to the active tab. To learn more about the content of each tab please refer to the sections 1.6.1, 1.6.2, 1.6.3, 1.6.4, 1.6.5 and 1.6.6 respectively.   The menu lines in the top of the screen and the bar in the bottom are not selectively developed for the SPIN application. They are ordinary web features. In most cases you can find your way round in SPIN by using the features and functions in the SPIN application alone.   When you are working with SPIN, you will mainly be in the browse mode where you can browse among selected records and look at the data in the tabs. The search mode is automatically activated when you hit the “Search Mode” button. Please refer to the sections 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 1.3.3 and 1.3.4 for more detailed information about searching in SPIN. Here you can also learn more about how to use the button “Show All”.