Set up in 1987, COLCHIC is a database for occupational exposure to chemical agents. Eight French regional health insurance fund (Caisse Régionale d'Assurance Maladie-CRAM) interregional laboratories and the French national research and safety institute (Institut National de Recherche et de Securite-INRS) laboratories have stored results and information from chemical agent exposure measurements on this database. More than 10 years later, 400,000 measurement results of exposure to 600 substances are now stored on COLCHIC. Utilization of data from this base is limited by the quality and absence of certain information, so a working group has been formed to develop a new data retrieval system, which takes into account recommendations formulated by the AIHA-ACGIH and European working groups. Utilization of this new coding system should allow improved description of workplace exposure conditions in the near future. This data retrieval system is currently being validated and should be used by the laboratories concerned during the course of 2001.