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EPA science training webinar: ECOTOX Knowledgebase
Citation:
Olker, J., C. Elonen, AND D. Hoff. EPA science training webinar: ECOTOX Knowledgebase. EPA Science Training Webinar, Duluth, MN, February 04, 2021. https://doi.org/10.23645/epacomptox.13724158
Impact/Purpose:
The ECOTOX Knowledgebase is a comprehensive, publicly available application providing chemical environmental toxicity data on aquatic life, terrestrial plants and wildlife compiled from over 51,000 references covering over 12,000 chemicals and over 13,000 species. ECOTOX data 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. This training webinar describes the ECOTOX systematic review and data extraction procedures, demonstrates how to access the data in ECOTOX, and presents an example on how ECOTOX data and recent advancement support environmental research and risk assessment.
Description:
The ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase (ECOTOX) is a publicly available web-based database providing curated single-chemical toxicity data for aquatic life, terrestrial plants, and wildlife. For over 30 years, ECOTOX has curated ecologically-relevant toxicity data to meet the systematic review and data transparency needs of the U.S. EPA for risk assessments and regulatory decisions. Relevant toxicity data are identified and curated through systematic and transparent procedures to conduct comprehensive literature searches, screen references, apply acceptance criteria, and extract all pertinent study and effects information. Currently, ECOTOX includes data for more than 12,000 chemicals from over 51,000 references. These data can be accessed via an interactive user interface and downloaded for ecological risk assessments, development of Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs), species extrapolation, and serve as a data source for the development of chemical screening and assessment tools for various regulatory applications. This webinar will provide an overview of ECOTOX including a summary of the literature search, review, and data curation procedures, and detailed examples of querying/downloading data using the interactive ‘Explore’ module to investigate and visualize the data available, the ‘Search’ module to directly query specific species, chemicals, or effects, and the ‘Help’ page to access documentation on processes, controlled vocabularies, and definitions. For more information visit the U.S. EPA’s ECOTOX website: https://www.epa.gov/ecotox/gov.
