The EPA on Thursday, April 29, 2010, officially opened the current administration's long-promised public access portal for searching the toxicity of chemicals in use by U.S. industry. The database, called ToxRefDB, allows scientists and the interested public to search and download thousands of toxicity testing results on hundreds of chemicals. ToxRefDB captures 30 years and $2 billion of testing results, the agency said.

"Tens of thousands of chemicals are in commerce and current chemical testing is expensive and time consuming. Results from chemical testing are scattered throughout different sources," said Dr. Robert Kavlock, director of EPA's National Center for Computational Toxicology. "ToxRefDB allows the public to search, find and compare available studies about chemical toxicity and potential health effects."

ToxRefDB provides detailed chemical toxicity data in an accessible format. It is a part of ACToR (Aggregated Computational Toxicology Resource), an online data warehouse that collects data from about 500 public sources on tens of thousands of environmentally relevant chemicals, including several hundred in ToxRefDB. Those interested in chemical toxicity can query a specific chemical and find all available public hazard, exposure, and risk-assessment data, as well as previously unpublished studies related to cancer, reproductive, and developmental toxicity.

The system connects to an EPA chemical screening tool called ToxCast, a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort that uses about 500 automated screening tests, with access to about 300 chemicals, to understand biological processes impacted by chemicals.

ToxRefDB contains toxicity information that forms the basis for pesticide risk assessments when combined with other sources of information, such as those on exposure and metabolism.

Access the database at http://actor.epa.gov/toxrefdb.

Source: EPA press release