This handbook provides data on more than 4000 substances, ions, and radicals chosen with regard for their industrial and scientific importance. It consists of six sections arranged in tabulated form.

The first section gives the formulas and names of substances, their relative molecular masses and important physical properties, such as phase-transition temperature, aggregate state, and density, along with data on substance reactivity (chemical properties) with respect to the most commonly used solutions and reagents (water, ethanol, hydrochloric, sulfuric, and nitric acids, sodium hydroxide, and ammonia hydrate).

The entries that describe naturally occurring substances include their mineralogical names, symmetry, and hardness. There is also data on the relative atomic masses of elements, properties of natural and radioactive isotopes, electronic configurations of atoms, energies of ionization, and affinities to electrons for atoms and molecules, binding energies and bond lengths, structure (geometric form) of constituent molecules and ions of various substances, including coordination compounds.

The handbook also lists the thermodynamic constants of the substances in all their aggregate states (gas, liquid, solid state, aqueous solution), redox potentials, acidity and basicity constants, stability constants of complexes in aqueous solution, and solubility in water.