You are here:
The ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase Literature Search and Review Processes for Identifying and Curating Toxicity Data for Ecological Risk Assessments
Citation:
Olker, J., C. Elonen, A. Anderson, A. Pomplun, C. Suomi, T. Karschnik, A. Pilli, AND D. Hoff. The ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase Literature Search and Review Processes for Identifying and Curating Toxicity Data for Ecological Risk Assessments. SETAC North America 42nd Annual meeting, Portland, OR, November 14 - 18, 2021. https://doi.org/10.23645/epacomptox.19104974
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation to SETAC North America 42nd Anual meeting November 2021. The ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase (ECOTOX) is the world’s largest compilation of curated environmental toxicity data on aquatic life, terrestrial plants, and wildlife. ECOTOX was developed to address the need to rapidly identify relevant toxicity data for risk assessment and management with methods that are also thorough, cost-effective, and transparent methods. The development of the Knowledgebase started in the early 1980s with three taxa specific databases which were combined in 1996 into ECOTOX, where single-chemical ecotoxicity data continue to be added every quarter and made available on a public-facing website (www.epa.gov/ecotox). This presentation provides and overview of the ECOTOX pipeline for literature searches, review of citations, and abstraction of study information and toxicity test results. ECOTOX continues to be a valuable resource to support assemblage and review of existing toxicity data for chemical decision-making. Incorporation of new tools and methods and the updated user interface improve the efficiency of the ECOTOX pipeline and make the curated data more accessible for end users.
Description:
The need for assembled existing toxicity data has accelerated as the number of chemicals introduced into commerce continues to grow. To address this evolving need, the ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase (ECOTOX) has been locating and curating ecologically-relevant toxicity data using systematic and transparent literature review procedures for over 30 years. ECOTOX is now a nationally and internationally recognized source of curated single-chemical toxicity data for aquatic and terrestrial organisms and currently includes test records for over 12,000 chemicals and 13,000 ecological species, with over one million test results from over 52,000 references and new records added quarterly to public website (www.epa.gov/ecotox). Presented here is an overview of ECOTOX, detailing the literature review and data curation processes, including how the well-established ECOTOX protocols align with current systematic review and evidence mapping practices, and the recent incorporation of automated and semi-automated tools to improve efficiency and transparency of the pipeline. ECOTOX conducts chemical-based comprehensive literature searches, screens titles and abstracts to identify references that meet applicability and initial acceptance criteria (e.g., ecologically-relevant species, verifiable CASRN, endpoint and control reported), and extracts all pertinent study and effects information (e.g., species, chemicals, test methods and conditions, toxicity results) from all acceptable studies, following controlled vocabularies. ECOTOX is utilized by government entities, academia, and industry to support ecological risk assessment, chemical prioritization and assessment, emergency response, and for development of models, tools, and applications (e.g., QSARs, Species Sensitivity Distributions, Adverse Outcome Pathways). To enhance the functionality and interoperability of data in ECOTOX, the user interface was recently updated with interactive queries and data visualization capabilities, and efforts are on-going to incorporate standard species and chemical identifiers and to harmonize terminologies with existing ontologies. ECOTOX continues to be a flexible resource for empirical toxicity data to help meet the challenge of providing more information at a faster pace for chemical decision-making. The incorporation of more efficient processes and the updated user interface provide the regulated industry and researchers more frequent data updates and improved methods to search and use existing toxic effects data to determine thresholds and conduct risk assessments. This abstract does not necessarily reflect US EPA policy.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: The ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase Literature Search and Review Processes for Identifying and Curating Toxicity Data for Ecological Risk Assessments
OLKER_ECOTOX_OVERVIEW_SETAC_SCICON4.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 4205.759 KB, about PDF)