Glossary
product use category
product use category is product use categories (PUC) are EPA's harmonized classification linking chemicals to the kinds of consumer and industrial products they appear in, including household cleaning products. In Datadory's catalog of 1,744 datasets, CPDat and EPA CompTox Chemicals Dashboard are working examples.
What is product use category?
Product use categories (PUC) are EPA's harmonized classification linking chemicals to the kinds of consumer and industrial products they appear in, including household cleaning products.
They surface both as CPDat fields and as the Products/Use Categories tab of the CompTox Dashboard.
In this catalog it appears concretely: - CPDat (tagging) — "puc; short_description: "harmonized product-use categories"". - EPA CompTox Chemicals Dashboard (tagging) — "product-use-categories".
Why does product use category matter when choosing a dataset?
Conventions decide whether two sources can be joined at all. Buy one side of an analysis that ignores this convention and every reconciliation step — calendar alignment, unit conversion, entity matching — lands on your team instead of the vendor's.
The failure mode is concrete: the label appears in a listing, the delivered files tell a different story, and the gap surfaces mid-project when fixing it is most expensive.
You rarely have to take a vendor's word for it. 82.4% of the 1,744 datasets Datadory catalogs are free to access, and CPDat lets you inspect the real artifact before any budget is committed.
How do you evaluate product use category in a data source?
Treat every claim of this attribute as testable:
- Read CPDat's record on tagging — "puc; short_description: "harmonized product-use categories"" — then confirm the delivered artifact matches before you license anything.
- Read EPA CompTox Chemicals Dashboard's record on tagging — "product-use-categories" — then confirm the delivered artifact matches before you license anything.
- Pin down update cadence in writing. Across this catalog, 22.6% of 1,744 datasets refresh daily and 64 still arrive only through a manual request form, so ask exactly how fresh each release is.
- Check whether definitions are verified at all. Field definitions are verified for 1495 of 1,744 datasets (85.7%), and any source you license should meet that bar.
- Price the delivery route before the license. In this catalog bulk download is the most common access method (725 datasets) ahead of official APIs (574), and 379 sources still require scraping — a maintenance cost that lands on you, not the vendor.
See the term applied to real records: diversified-chemicals data, household-products data.
Related terms
Adjacent concepts worth reading next: - functional use category - product formulation record - Safer Choice certification
Frequently asked questions
What is an example of product use category?
CPDat is the clearest example in this catalog. Its record on tagging reads: "puc; short_description: "harmonized product-use categories"". Across all 1,744 datasets Datadory averages a quality score of 7.81 out of 10, so a named example can be weighed rather than trusted blindly.
Is data described as "product use category" free to use?
Treat access and permission separately. 82.4% of the 1,744 datasets in this catalog are free to access, but 235 are freemium and 61 are paid outright, so confirm both the price and the license on the exact distribution before building on it.
How do I verify a source really provides product use category?
Open CPDat next to EPA CompTox Chemicals Dashboard and compare the promise with the download. Field definitions are verified for 1495 of 1,744 datasets (85.7%), which makes that check fast inside the catalog and manual outside it.
Datasets containing this field
Datasets containing product use category
6 datasets carry product use category in the catalog. Open one, count the fields, judge for yourself.
American Chemistry Council — Resin Production & Sales Statistics
end_use_segment · report_series · capacity_volume …+3 more
Apify — ECHEMI Scraper (Chemical B2B Marketplace)
listing_reference · storefront_reference · company_type …+2 more
BASF-AI Chemical Data Collection (Hugging Face)
Synonyms · Description · Paper metadata columns …+2 more
Cefic — Facts and Figures of the European Chemical Industry
Decoded series labels · Extended partner-country trade breakouts · Price, productivity, volume and value-added panel …+1 more
chemicalparks.eu — European Chemical Parks & Clusters Database
Infrastructure flags · Land-status attributes · Contact …+1 more
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