ASHT Public Health Project

Alerting System for Chemical Health Threats (ASHT II)

The main objective of ASHT research project is the design and testing of a rapid alert system for health threats caused by chemical agents, especially when chemicals have been deliberately released by terrorists (EU-RAS-CHEM).

The leading project partner is UK Health Protection Agency (HPA), Didcot (UK). Further partner are  the poisons centres in Göttingen (UMG-GOE), Lille (CHRU), London (GSTFT), Prague (GFH) and Vilnius (HESC), and the European Association of Poisons Centres and Clinical Toxicologists (EAPCCT). The WHO, Geneva, cooperates as an associate partner.

Last review: 2010-04-10.

ASHT is funded in part by the European Commission (European Union Public Health Programme).

EU-RAS-CHEM will run on a server at the DG-SANCO in Luxembourg.

• Official ASHT Website of UK Health Protection Agency (HPA)

• summary leaflet

The project is organized in 7 workpackages (WPs).

• WP 1 Coordination (leading partner HPA)
• WP 2 Dissemination of results (leading partner EAPCCT)
• WP 3 Project evaluation (leading partner HPA)
• WP 4 Development of an EU wide poisons centre forum (leading partner GIZ-Nord/UMG)
• WP 5 Information requirements for Public Health Authorities (leading partner HPA)
• WP 6 Harmonsation of agents and medical symptoms (leading partner GFH, Prague)
• WP 7 Further development of RAS-CHEM (leading partner GIZ-Nord/UMG)

Further reading:

• Detailed information for project partners only are presented here.

• Informationen zum Projekt auf Deutsch finden Sie hier.

The project phase II was finished in September 2011. A main result of the project work is the

• DRATO RAS-CHEM, a developmental version of the risk assessors tier of RAS-CHEM (formerly named Poisons Centres Forum, see WP 4) that includes structure description of model poisonings, especially poisoning symptoms. This database can freely accessed in read only-mode using the username "guest" and password "guest".

The work will continue in the third project phase (ASHT III) that has started in 2012. ASHT will also be partially funded as Public Health by the European Commission.