ECOTOX Knowledgebase: New tools for data visualization and database interoperability -Poster
Citation:
Elonen, C., J. Olker, C. LaLone, D. Hoff, S. Erickson, M. Skopinski, C. Horn, S. Casey, K. Fay, AND A. Pilli. ECOTOX Knowledgebase: New tools for data visualization and database interoperability -Poster. Society of Toxicology, San Antoonio, TX, March 11 - 15, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
ECOTOX provides a detailed set of toxic effects data that can be used in deriving not only local and federal Agency benchmarks such as the Superfund ecological soil screening levels, and Office of Water's ambient water quality criteria, but also for industrial chemical reviews, emergency responses, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act facility permits, and Total Maximum Daily Load determinations. ECOTOX is now the most comprehensive ecotoxicology database and is essential for providing and supporting high quality models needed to estimate population effects of toxic chemicals across a wide range of species and spatiallyexplicit landscapes. In addition, ECOTOX provides a single repository for ecologically-based data, thereby improving consistency in effect characterizations. Without ECOTOX availability, States, Program and Regional Offices would need to create duplicative, 'stove-piped' databases to meet regulatory outputs and deadlines. This would lead to inconsistencies in retrieval and documentation of information used in regulatory actions, thereby adversely affecting the quality of decision-making at all levels of government.
Description:
The ECOTOXicology knowledgebase (ECOTOX) is a comprehensive, curated database that summarizes toxicology data from single chemical exposure studies to terrestrial and aquatic organisms. The ECOTOX Knowledgebase provides risk assessors and researchers consistent information on toxic effects of chemical substances for use in deriving benchmarks and establishing criteria. 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. Study details such as species taxonomic hierarchy, chemical purity, routes of exposure, and all calculated or statistically derived endpoints provided by the authors is encoded in discrete data fields for each test result. During the past 10+ years, ECOTOX has aligned the coding of the aquatic and terrestrial references by the addition of data fields, adapted search terminology to better focus literature searches, and updated search screens. To meet the data needs of 21st century toxicological assessments, new tools have been integrated into ECOTOX to improve data mining capabilities for end users such that environmental regulatory, the regulated industry, and researchers can more effectively and efficiently search and use existing toxic effects data. New data visualization and filtering options have been added to aid in data exploration. Efforts to enhance interoperability with other EPA databases have been employed to assist in efficiently accessing necessary data. These additions will be available in ECOTOX Knowledgebase version 5.0, to be released in FY18.