The Use of Thesauri for Cancer Prevention in Workplace M. Giacomini, R. Gazzarata, S. Bertolini, F. Rizzo, and D. Vecchio Department of Communication Computer and System Science, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy Abstract—Cancer prevention is very important to limit the incidence and mortality due to tumor diffusion. Working places receive people for most of their living time, so preven- tion in these places is of extreme importance. This paper pre- sent a web based system to collect and distribute reliable and updated information on cancer prevention in working places. These information is present in many web sites and, in some cases, in quite hidden pages, so it is important to set up a tool to search in a clear and fast way independently on the lan- guage in which information is recorded. Keywords—Cancer prevention, meta thesaurus, web research. I. INTRODUCTION The workplace safety problem is becoming more and more important so that the UE decided to invest funds in some projects to try to increase the prevention in all sectors in order to reduce the chronic-degenerative diseases due to working causes, specifically to reduce early deaths. One of these project is EuroWorksafe that promotes the communi- cation and the dissemination of knowledge, offering access to a wide range of contents (guidelines, good laboratory practices, papers, data banks, web sites, law collections and training resources) and services trying to reduce the time to find validated information, both for generic and professional users, by providing a unique, specialized access point to distribute information, with facilitated access by the use of a semantic web platform. The aim of EuroWorksafe is to improve the workers’ conditions at work and to contribute to a reduction in the incidence of occupational cancers, by means of reliable and accurate information supporting the creation of habits on safety and prevention objectives. [1] We collaborated within this project in a section dedicated to the cancerogenic substances to develop a multi-language research and consultation tool for workers and students with analysis and elaboration of International databases. Specifi- cally, we developed a meta-thesaurus containing English, Italian, French, German and Spanish names of chemical substances connected by codes. We merged this meta- thesaurus with the collection of international codes in order to obtain the keys to access international public DBs with updated knowledge about these substances by means of structured resources (toxicity doses, exposure treatment) and unstructured resources (scientific papers, approved reports). We decided to record only lists of substances and link to other web sites to get information in order to leave the task of update structured and unstructured resources to the Governmental and International Organizations that are institutionally dedicated to these substances. [2]. II. MATERIAS AND METHODS Due to previous considerations, we looked for the web sites of the Governmental and International Organizations (IPCS INCHEM, IARC, IRIS and others) that share infor- mation on these substances and for specific tools developed by these organizations [2]. Then we looked for updated and structured lists of chemical or dangerous substances in some different languages (English, Italian, French, German and Spanish) connected with the correspondent international identifier codes: CAS, CE, Index Name. Fig. 1 Key of access of International public DB After that, we analyzed the address strings required by these institutional sites and we found the keys to access for each International public DB: figure 1 shows that the most of these public lists uses the substances name or the CAS code. For this reason we decided to use CAS code as main code in our DB. This code is a number that the Chemical Abstract Service assigns to each substance and it is formed by a sequence of 3 number hyphen-minus separated: the first one consists of a variable number (maximum of 6 digit), the second one by 2 digits and the third by only one O. Dössel and . (Eds.): WC 2009, IFMBE Proceedings 25/ , pp. 2009. www.springerlink.com W C. Schlegel V 193, 192–