Citation:

Olker, J., C. Elonen, A. Pilli, A. Anderson, B. Kinzinger, S. Erickson, M. Skopinski, A. Pomplun, C. LaLone, C. Russom, AND D. Hoff. The ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase: A Curated Database of Ecologically Relevant Toxicity Tests to Support Environmental Research and Risk Assessment. ENVIRONMENTAL TOXICOLOGY AND CHEMISTRY. Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, Pensacola, FL, 41(6):1520-1539, (2022). https://doi.org/10.1002/etc.5324

Impact/Purpose:

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 manuscript: 1) provides an overview of the ECOTOX pipeline for literature searches, review of references, and abstraction of study information, highlighting the consistency with current systematic review and evidence mapping practices; 2) introduces the recently released updated version of the web-application with enhanced options to query, identify, and retrieve data; 3) summarizes the type and extent of included data, with examples of applications and tools using data from ECOTOX; and 4) describes the continuing role of ECOTOX to provide curated toxicity data to support risk assessment and chemical decision-making, including the shift to incorporate new approach methodologies and reduce reliance on animal testing.

Description:

The need for assembled existing toxicity data has accelerated as the number of chemicals introduced into commerce continues to grow and regulatory mandates call for a reduction in animal usage for testing. To address this evolving need, the ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase (ECOTOX) was developed starting in the 1980s and has been maintained as the world’s largest compilation of curated ecotoxicity data providing support for assessments of chemical safety and ecological research through systematic and transparent literature review procedures. The recently released version of the Knowledgebase (ECOTOX V5, www.epa.gov/ecotox) provides single chemical ecotoxicity data for over 12,000 chemicals and ecological species with over one million test results from over 50,000 references. Presented here is an overview of ECOTOX, detailing the literature review and data curation processes within the context of current systematic review practices, and discussing how recent updates improve the accessibility and reusability of data to support the assessment, management, and research of environmental chemicals. Relevant and acceptable data are identified from studies in the scientific literature, with pertinent study details and results extracted following well-established controlled vocabularies and newly extracted toxicity data added quarterly to the public website. Release of ECOTOX V5 included an entirely re-designed user interface to enhance data queries, identification, and retrieval options with data visualizations to aid in data exploration, customizable outputs for export and use in external applications, and interoperability with chemical and toxicity databases and tools. ECOTOX is a reliable source of curated ecological toxicity data for chemical assessments and research, and continues to evolve with accessible and transparent state-of-the-art practices in literature data curation and increased interoperability to other relevant resources.

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