| THE CIS NEWS | August 2004 |
| This issue of The CIS News is coming to you from the CIS E-mail address -- cissupport@nisc.com. Comments, questions, concerns, etc., should be directed to that address. | |
| UPDATES | |
| Several existing CIS databases were updated in August. | |
| ISHOW: | |
The ISHOW database --
Information System for Hazardous Organics in Water -- was updated in August for the second
time this year. This modest but useful database currently contains data pertaining to six
parameters useful in environmental assessments --
Not all data points are available for all substances, of course, but some data are now included for more than 5,500 unique chemical substances. It should be noted, too, that the database contains DATA, not merely bibliographic references: That is, the actual boiling point or water solubility value appears in the record, and it is usually not necessary to seek out the cited source for any further information. ISHOW data are generally drawn from the published literature, with heavy emphasis on standard reference sources. (Sources are of course cited in the records.) Records citing reference sources from the 1980s are gradually being re-verified in current versions of these reference works; the records are annotated when a given value appears in several editions of a work over a period of years. Some unpublished data submitted to EPA under the provisions of TSCA are also cited in the database, and more will appear in future. In abstracting new data for the database, preference is given to substances appearing on EPA's list of High Production Volume chemicals (HPV), although data for substances not on that list are also occasionally added to the database. |
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| RTECS®: | |
| A regular
quarterly update to the RTECS (R) database increased the number of records in the
database from 158,339 to 158,901, each dealing with one chemical substance. The addition
of 562 new records to the database this time is consistent with the last several updates,
which added 602 records (April 2004), 633 records (January 2004), and 602 records (October
2003). We should note, too, that more than 4,300 records have been added to the database
or altered during 2004 -- so far. If you are using one of those versions of RTECS (R)
that is not being updated regularly, you're missing a substantial body of data. In the last issue of The CIS News, we mentioned a a detailed statistical description of RTECS (R) that we proposed doing in the near future. That essay is now completed, and it's available to anyone interested at http://www.nisc.com/cis/RTECS_Analysis_March_2004.pdf The analysis includes detailed statistics about coverage of the 158,000+ chemicals included in the database as of March, 2004, under the following headings:
The analysis generally includes statistics about common routes of administration, species tested, and measurement of results (e.g., LC50, LD50, etc.). It includes a list of the 10 most extensively covered substances in the database. There is also a list of the 10 most frequently cited journals/sources of information from the more than 3,100 individual sources that RTECS (R) cites. |
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| TSCATS: | |
| The TSCATS
"update" did not add any new records to the database. No new issuances of TSCATS
have been made since last spring because of contract negotiations going on between EPA
and its TSCATS contractor(s). (EPA expects this to be resolved shortly, with new TSCATS
updates following immediately thereafter.) However, a number of additional full-text
images were added to the database, the number of references to summaries of studies in RTECS
was increased, and the abstracts that appear in approximately 16% of TSCATS records
were re-organized. TSCATS on CIS offers more direct access than any other version
of the database to the data contained in the TSCA submissions indexed in TSCATS,
and those studies not yet available in some form online continue to be available from CIS
on microfiche. In the course of working on this revision to TSCATS, we had occasion to prepare a detailed (seven page) summary of the database's contents. The analysis covers corporate submitters (including a list of the top 20 of more than a thousand submitters), chemicals covered (including the top 20 of 8,493 substances covered), and observations (including a breakdown by subcategory of health effects, environmental fate observations, and environmental effects). The report is available as a PDF file to anyone interested at: http://www.nisc.com/cis/TSCATS_Analysis_March_2004.pdf |
|
| CERCLIS (Superfund Sites): | |
| The number of sites/ records in the database increased from 45,092 to 45,556. The number of records with lists of PRPs attached (Potentially Responsible Parties) increased from 2,711 to 2,939. (REMINDER: When searching for the name of a company -- either as a site name OR a PRP -- SHORTER entries are better than long ones: Thus, HAMMOND VALVE is a much better search term than HAMMOND VALVE CORP or HAMMOND VALVE CO. This applies generally to searching for corporate/site names in any of CIS's site-oriented databases.) | |
| TERRETOX: | |
| The TERRETOX database was recently updated: It now contains records derived from some 3,800 separate sources for more than 2,900 unique chemical substances and more than 1,800 species. The database previously contained records relating to toxicity tests on terrestrial animals, but it now contains records pertaining to plant species as well. In fact, much if not all of what previously appeared in PHYTOTOX (plant toxicity) has now been incorporated into TERRETOX. PHYTOTOX itself has been a "closed file" -- no updates -- for years. Now that its contents have largely been incorporated into TERRETOX, we will have to consider whether it's worthwhile keeping it up. The duplication of content argues in favor of removing PHYTOTOX, but there may be some residual value in the relatively straightforward way that PHYTOTOX presents its data. We'll consider whether to drop PHYTOTOX or not at a latter date. Meanwhile, if you have an opinion on the subject, we'd be glad to take it into account. Contact us at the E-mail address shown in the heading to this newsletter. | |
| TSCAINV: | |
| The TSCAINV database of chemicals listed on the public portion of EPA's TSCA Inventory -- the list of chemicals approved for use in industry and commerce in the US -- was updated in August. This update includes the 65,168 records drawn from the "second issue, 2004" of the database. (For a detailed discussion of the TSCAINV database, see the April 2004 issue of The CIS News. It is available in the newsletter archive at http://www.nisc.com/cis/cis_news.htm.) | |
| HSDB and IRIS: | |
A small number of new or revised records were added to each of these databases. |
|
| A TRUE STORY: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR | |
| A user E-mailed an RTECS (R) record to himself several
times, but it never arrived in his mailbox. He eventually asked one of our systems people
to find out what was happening. The problem turned out to be the user's own E-mail system.
It was equipped with an automatic spam blocker that was tuned to react to some of the more common topics/phrases in E-mail spam scams. Of course, diet schemes are a common subject for unwanted, unsolicited E-mails, so one thing the spam blocker looked for in incoming messages was the phrase "weight loss" -- and the record in question included "weight loss" as a symptom in one toxicity test. As a result, every time the user sent the record to himself, his own spam blocker killed it. MORAL: When something's happening on our system that isn't what you expect, let us know. If it's something we need to fix, we will. Even if it ISN'T something we need to fix, the explanation can sometimes be quite amusing. |
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April 2004 Newsletter |
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