You are here:
Expanded chemical use data, including data on occupational use of chemicals
Citation:
Isaacs, K. AND K. Phillips. Expanded chemical use data, including data on occupational use of chemicals. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC.
Impact/Purpose:
The health impacts of chemicals in commerce are assessed by the EPA’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The law requires that chemicals be assessed based on potential risk, and exposure is a key component of risk assessment. Data on the use of a chemical and the amounts present in consumer products are critical elements in the determination of human exposure to chemicals encountered in our environment.
Description:
Near-field sources have been identified as significant contributors to exposure for many chemicals. In addition, information on general chemical use is needed for informing decision support tools and prioritization workflows. We have also recently seen a need for data on ingredients used in industrial and occupational use products. Previously, the ChemExpoDB database was developed to create a central, structured, repository of product composition and related data which allowed for harmonizing of data, standardized quality checks, and transparent, reproducible, efficient, and sustainable workflows for curating data for use in regulatory decision making. The database includes an integrated family of exposure data sets, linked across multiple exposure data streams, and linked to standardized chemical identifiers. Due to the need for additional data streams to be included in the previously developed ChemExpoDB database, we deliver an updated version of the database, now including additional product composition and chemical functional use data. Further, the database now includes a much expanded set of general use information for chemicals, tagging sources of chemical use data with keywords to aid in researchers or program partners identifying data sources of interest or use to them. Also included is a set of product composition data specific to occupational and industrial use products, along with a new occupational and industrial use product use category (PUC) framework for categorizing these products. Further, the publicly available set of NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation reports studying workplace exposures have been included in the database, extracted, and linked to standard chemical identifiers, such that reports including information on a chemical of interest can be easily identified. The resulting MySQL database contains over 500,000 primary source documents, linked to 3.9 million chemical records. This is an increase of approximately 135,000 primary source documents, and 2 million chemical records, as compared to the previously delivered database. The chemical records represent a chemical scope of more than 27,000 unique chemical structures (i.e., unique DTXSIDs), more than double the 10,000 unique chemical structures included previously. The database now includes approximately 3,000 products assigned to an article product category (i.e, durable goods), and 15,000 products anticipated to be assigned to an industrial or occupational product category. There are 1,300 NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation reports included, currently representing 356 unique chemical structures.