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Enhancing the data usability from the ECOTOX Knowledgebase
Citation:
Elonen, C., J. Olker, D. Hoff, S. Erickson, M. Skopinski, A. Pilli, K. Murphy, G. Sachs, AND B. Kinziger. Enhancing the data usability from the ECOTOX Knowledgebase. SETAC North America, Fort Worth, TX, November 15 - 19, 2020.
Impact/Purpose:
The ECOTOX Knowledgebase is a comprehensive, publicly available application providing chemical environmental toxicity data on aquatic life, terrestrial plants and wildlife. ECOTOX data has been compiled over more than 30 years and currently includes over 50,000 references covering over 12,000 chemicals and over 13,000 species. Data from ECOTOX are used for all ecological risk assessments supporting pesticide registrations and re-registrations, all ambient water quality criteria for chemicals published since 1985, site-specific water quality criteria (by EPA Regions, States, and Tribes), and assessments used in emergency response. ECOTOX has established standard operating procedures that meet requirements for Agency systematic reviews of available information for use in Agency decision making. ECOTOX has established standard operating procedures that meet requirements for Agency systematic reviews of available information for use in Agency decision making. Efforts are underway to refine and implement tools to improve current literature search and retrieval procedures, integrate ecological data with human health evidence mapping, and incorporate information of study quality into ECOTOX outputs. These updated functionality and interoperability changes will provide the regulated industry and researchers more effective methods to search and use existing toxic effects data to determine thresholds and conduct risk assessments.
Description:
The ECOTOX Knowledgebase (ECOTOX) is a comprehensive, publicly available application providing chemical environmental toxicity data on aquatic life, terrestrial plants and wildlife. Data are curated from the scientific literature after exhaustive search protocols and contains more than 1 million data records from over 12,000 chemicals and species. Pertinent study details [species, chemical(s), test methods, and results] are extracted from papers that meet ECOTOX inclusion criteria, with data being added to the public-facing website quarterly. A common challenge for large data sets is to provide the ability of data seekers to efficiently retrieve targeted information and link output to multiple computational platforms. In August of 2018 ECOTOX Knowledgebase V5 was released with enhanced data identification and retrieval capabilities that have been previously described. Since the initial release, several additional widgets have been added to enhance end user experience for data retrieval and platform interoperability. Updated data filtering, visualization and graphing options have been added to aid in data exploration and identification of key information. Customizable outputs were developed to allow users to select data fields for export into formats compatible with direct input into platforms such as EPA’s SSD Toolbox and populating data evaluation records. Efforts have been completed to integrate other platforms such as EPA’s Chemicals Dashboard that provides a myriad of chemical characteristics, and to SeqAPASS to aid in species extrapolations of chemical effects. We have also updated search terminology techniques to better focus literature searches for chemicals of interest to both researchers and risk assessors. These improvements, along with ongoing enhancement efforts, will assist in efficiently accessing necessary data for ecotoxicological chemical assessments and research.