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Application of the Ecotoxicology Knowledgebase (ECOTOX) to support environmental research and risk assessment
Citation:
Olker, J., C. LaLone, C. Elonen, S. Erickson, M. Skopinski, A. Pilli, AND D. Hoff. Application of the Ecotoxicology Knowledgebase (ECOTOX) to support environmental research and risk assessment. SETAC North America, Sacramento, CA, November 04 - 08, 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 data are used for all ecological risk assessments supporting pesticide registrations and re-registrations, all ambient water quality criteria for chemicals published since 1985, site-specific water quality criteria (by EPA Regions, States, and Tribes), and assessments used in emergency response. This poster describes the recent updates to the ECOTOX user interface and presents several case studies demonstrating how ECOTOX v5.0 has improved to support environmental research and risk assessment.
Description:
The ECOTOX Knowledgebase (http://cfpub.epa.gov/ecotox/) is a nationally and internationally recognized source of curated single-chemical toxicity data for aquatic life, terrestrial plants, and wildlife. This publicly available database currently includes data on more than 11,000 chemicals from over 47,000 references. ECOTOX data are used for all ecological risk assessments supporting pesticide registrations and re-registrations, all ambient water quality criteria for chemicals published since 1985, site-specific water quality criteria (by EPA Regions, States, and Tribes), and assessments used in emergency response. A significantly enhanced interface (v5.0) of the ECOTOX Knowledgebase was released in 2018. Advances include the integration of improved and computationally automated literature search strategies for data curation, and inclusion of more mechanistic (e.g., genetic, enzymatic) and pathway-based (e.g., hormonal, cellular) data to better align with the evolution of toxicity testing. This newly released ECOTOX user interface has enhanced functionality for searching and exploring data, with interactive data visualization capabilities. Further, links to other EPA tools (e.g., CompTox Chemistry Dashboard) and databases were integrated, laying the foundation for future interoperability. Presented here are three case studies demonstrating how ECOTOX v5.0 has improved to support environmental research and risk assessment. The case studies focus on: 1) linking detections and concentrations of environmental contaminants to effects data; 2) identifying empirical data to support and expand the development of adverse outcome pathways; and 3) gathering data for development of toxicity reference values. In these examples, the new ECOTOX Explore options were used to evaluate the scope of data availability, observe potential trends across chemicals or biological species, and develop testable hypotheses, thus demonstrating how improved features allow for rapid acquisition and analysis with the most relevant available toxicity data. With the new and improved ECOTOX platform, researchers and risk assessors can explore, visualize, identify, and download curated toxicity effects data that best match exposure scenarios, species of interest, and most appropriate assessment and measurement endpoints for developing or addressing focused research questions and decision-making.