This article presents an approach to evaluating the toxic potential for products or materials using Chinese-language material safety data sheets (MSDSs). The toxic potential indicator (TPI) is one of many simple methods used to evaluate the environmental impact of toxins in products and materials. According to actual application experience in Taiwan, difficulties and problems arise in the preliminary implementation of TPI values calculated via Chinese-language MSDSs. Some adjustment techniques combining Chinese vocabulary conversion and unit transformation are proposed in this article to overcome these obstacles. The proposed procedures and evaluated results can serve as a basis for environmentally conscious product design, especially with regard to the choice of materials used in Chinese-speaking countries.
