Since its inception in 2002, the European Food safety Authority (EFSA) has produced risk assessments for more than 4,400 substances in over 1,650 Scientific Opinions, Statements and Conclusions through the work of its Scientific Panels, Units and Scientific Committee. For each individual substance, a summary of human health, animal health and ecological hazard assessments has been collected and structured into EFSA's Chemical Hazards Database: OpenFoodTox. OpenFoodTox provides open source data for substance characterisation, links to the relevant EFSA output, background regulations and summaries of critical toxicological endpoints. An online MicroStrategy tool enables the downloading of summary data sheets for each individual substance in PDF or Excel format. OpenFoodTox is a valuable tool and source of information for scientific advisory bodies and stakeholders with an interest in chemical risk assessment. This editorial provides a snapshot description of OpenFoodTox as an open source toxicological database for chemical risk assessment.
