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Development of the Alternatives Assessment Dashboard (Orlando)
Citation:
Vegosen, L. AND T. Martin. Development of the Alternatives Assessment Dashboard (Orlando). ACS National Meeting & Expo, Orlando, Florida, March 31 - April 04, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
The Alternatives Assessment (AA) Dashboard enables users to readily compare alternatives on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) CompTox Chemicals Dashboard (https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard). For each selected chemical, the AA Dashboard displays color-coded hazard scores (from low to very high) for a series of hazard endpoints (e.g. acute mammalian toxicity, carcinogenicity, acute aquatic toxicity, etc). The scoring criteria were based on the EPA’s Design for the Environment Program (DfE) Alternatives Assessment Criteria for Hazard Evaluation. The beta version of the AA dashboard currently contains over 290,000 score records for more than 85,000 chemicals. Hazard data was compiles from public online sources including chemical hazard lists, Globally Harmonized System (GHS) scores from several different countries, and a database of quantitative toxicity values. In addition, the AA Dashboard generates predicted values from WebTEST (web-services Toxicity Estimation Software Tool). This webtool and its underlying data can aid in the pre-prioritization of chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).
Description:
The goal of alternatives assessment is to identify safer alternatives for chemicals of concern. Comparative chemical hazard assessment is an important component of alternatives assessment. This project aimed to develop a webtool, the Alternatives Assessment (AA) Dashboard, which will display compiled chemical hazard data and enable users to readily compare alternatives on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) CompTox Chemicals Dashboard (https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard). We obtained chemical hazard data from public online sources including chemical hazard lists, Globally Harmonized System (GHS) scores from several different countries, and a database of quantitative toxicity values. We also obtained predicted values based on quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models using EPA’s Toxicity Estimation Software Tool (TEST). We used Java programming to parse the data into a database and to generate hazard scores. For each data source, we determined a chemical hazard score (Low, Medium, High, or Very High) for each of several hazard endpoints (such as acute toxicity, carcinogenicity, etc.). Our scoring criteria were based on the EPA’s Design for the Environment Program (DfE) Alternatives Assessment Criteria for Hazard Evaluation. Other alternatives assessment methodologies such as GreenScreen have built on DfE. We compared advantages and disadvantages of a modified version of the trumping scheme used by GreenScreen and a weighted average method for combining scores from multiple sources into one chemical hazard score for each endpoint. The beta version of the AA dashboard currently contains over 290,000 score records for more than 85,000 chemicals. This webtool and its underlying data can aid in the pre-prioritization of chemicals under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act (LCSA). The views expressed in this abstract are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.