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DEMO: ECOTOX Knowledgebase
Citation:
Olker, J. DEMO: ECOTOX Knowledgebase. SETAC Focused Topic Meeting, Durham, NC, April 16 - 18, 2018.
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 47,000 references covering over 11,000 chemicals and over 12,000 species. ECOTOX has established standard operating procedures that meet requirements for Agency systematic reviews of available information for use in Agency decision making. ECOTOX provides information online for all stakeholders to view when regulatory decisions are implemented. Several governmental entities from across the globe (e.g. OECD) utilize the curated information, creating international congruity in data being used for chemical decision making.
Description:
The ECOTOXicology Knowledgebase (ECOTOX), is a comprehensive, curated database that summarizes toxicology data fromsingle chemical exposure studies to aquatic life, terrestrial plants, and wildlife. The ECOTOX Knowledgebase currently has curated data from over 47,000 references and includes study details such as species taxonomic hierarchy, chemical purity, routes of exposure, and all calculated or statistically derived endpoints provided by the authors. Data are curated from the scientific literature after an exhaustive search protocol. ECOTOX has the capability to refine and filter data searches by 19 parameters (e.g. Species, Chemical, Effect, Control, Year, etc.) and customize output selections from over 100 data fields for users’ specific applications. For over 30 years, the ECOTOX Knowledgebase has provided risk assessors and researchers consistent information on toxic effects of chemical substances for use in deriving benchmark concentrations, establishing water quality criteria values, and other applications. Over this timeframe, ECOTOX has evolved significantly as toxicity testing has shifted to include a greater variety of endpoints with more focus on mechanistic and pathway-based data. The next generation of the ECOTOX Knowledgebase includes new user-friendly functionality, improved literature searching strategies, and curation of additional data fields to capture biochemistry, enzyme(s), hormone(s), and genetics effect measures. The new tools integrated into ECOTOX include data exploration with interactive data visualization options. Additionally, efforts are on-going to enhance interoperability with other databases and tools such that environmental regulatory agencies, the regulated industry, and researchers can more effectively and efficiently search and use existing toxic effects data. These additions will be available in ECOTOX Knowledgebase version 5.0, to be released in 2018.