Library
Research
for ENS
(in general)

If you need to find books or articles beyond what's discussed on this website, see Library Research for ENS Seminar. It's a more comprehensive guide to doing research on a wide variety of environmental issues.

Major Governmental Agencies | Major Databases & Resources | Suggestions for Literature Review

Major Governmental Agencies

Federal

• Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry (ATSDR) -- principal federal public health agency charged with the responsibility of evaluating the human health effects of exposure to hazardous substances. The agency works in close collaboration with local, state, and other federal agencies, with tribal governments, and with communities and local health care providers. The goal of the agency is to help prevent or reduce harmful human health effects from exposure to hazardous substances.
• Office of Prevention, Pesticides, & Toxic Substances, Environmental Protection Agency -- promote pollution prevention and the public's right to know about chemical risks; evaluate pesticides and chemicals to safeguard all Americans, including children and other vulnerable members of the population, as well as threatened species and ecosystems.
• Toxicology & Environmental Health, National Library of Medicine -- portal to databases and selected Internet resources

Illinois

• Department of Public Health, Division of Environmental Health - Works to reduce the incidence of disease and injury related to environmental factors fall within five major areas of responsibility: rulemaking; plan reviews and construction permits; inspections; vocational and facility licensing; and engineering and toxicological reports.
• Illinois Environmental Protection Agency - Fosters a cleaner, healthier environment through responsibilities granted under the State of Illinois Environmental Protection Act and other state and federal laws/regulations. Publications include: Toxic Chemical Report - Annual summary of information contained in the Toxic Chemical Report Forms, the annual reports to be filed by certain companies which release any of over 600 listed toxic chemicals and compounds to the environment.

Major Databases and Resources

Case Studies in Environmental Medicine
Series of self-instructional publications designed to increase the primary care provider's knowledge of hazardous substances in the environment and to aid in the evaluation of potentially exposed patients. Limited to 16 case studies at the present: Arsenic Toxicity, Asbestos Toxicity, Benzene Toxicity, Chromium Toxicity, Disease Clusters: An Overview, Environmental Triggers of Asthma, Lead Toxicity, Nitrate/Nitrite Toxicity, Pediatric Environmental Health, Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Toxicity, Radiation Exposure From Iodine 131, Radon Toxicity, Stoddard Solvent Toxicity, Taking an Exposure History, Toluene Toxicity, and Trichloroethylene Toxicity.

Envirofacts Data Warehouse and Applications - Retrieve environmental information from EPA databases on Air, Chemicals, Facility Information, Grants/Funding, Hazardous Waste, Risk Management Plans, Superfund, Toxic Release Inventory , and Water Permits, Drinking Water, Drinking Water Contaminant Occurrence, and Drinking Water Microbial and Disinfection Byproduct Information (Information Collection Rule [ICR]). You may retrieve information from several databases at once, or from one database at a time.

GATHER Geographic Analysis Tool for Health & Environmental Research
GIS/spatial data access system that provides members of the public health community and general public access to spatial data that is pertinent to the analysis and exploration of public health issues. Map a geographic area and can view particular hazardous waste sites, population density, nearby water bodies, etc.

HazDat Database Hazardous Substance Release/Health Effects Database
Scientific and administrative database developed to provide access to information on the release of hazardous substances from Superfund sites or from emergency events and on the effects of hazardous substances on the health of human populations. The following information is included in HazDat: site characteristics, activities and site events, contaminants found, contaminant media and maximum concentration levels, impact on population, community health concerns, ATSDR public health threat categorization, ATSDR recommendations, environmental fate of hazardous substances, exposure routes, and physical hazards at the site/event.

Household Products Database
Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine. "Learn more about what's in these products, about potential health effects, and about safety and handling. Information in the Household Products Database is taken from a variety of publicly available sources, including brand-specific labels and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) prepared by manufacturers."

Toxicological Profiles or print versions DOC HE20.7918: on Level 2
275 toxicological profiles available online in PDF format from the ATSDR website. The library also has a CD-ROM version of the final and draft profiles as of 2002. (You can request a free CD-ROM from ATSDR.) And the library periodically gets the draft and final versions in paper. (Currently we only have less than 20 of the recent draft/final versions in paper.) They tend to be 200-300 pages long, so paper may be easier to browse. ATSDR also puts out 2 page FAQs on each substance.

TOXMAP - GIS system to visually represent data from the Toxic Release Inventory

TOXNET Toxicology Data Network -- portal to 9 toxicology and hazardous chemicals databases from the National Library of Medicine

Databases include

• CCRIS - Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information System -- Chemical records from the National Cancer Institute, with carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, tumor promotion, and tumor inhibition test results. Data are derived from studies cited in primary journals, current awareness tools, NCI reports, and other special sources. Test results have been reviewed by experts in carcinogenesis and mutagenesis.
• ChemIDplus -- Structure and nomenclature authority files used for the identification of chemical substances cited in National Library of Medicine databases. Also provides structure searching and direct links to many biomedical resources at NLM and on the Internet for chemicals of interest. Searchable by Name, Synonym, CAS Registry Number, Molecular Formula, Classification Code, Locator Code, and Structure
• DART/ETIC - Developmental & Reproductive Toxicology (1965-present) -- Bibliographic database for articles, covering teratology and other aspects of developmental and reproductive toxicology. Joint project of the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Center for Toxicological Research of the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Library of Medicine.
• GENE-TOX - Genetic Toxicology (Mutagenicity) -- Toxicology data file containing genetic toxicology (mutagenicity) test data, resulting from expert peer review of the open scientific literature, on over 3000 chemicals. From the Environmental Protection Agency
• HSDB - Hazardous Substances Data Bank -- Toxicology data file focusing on the toxicology of potentially hazardous chemicals; enhanced with information on human exposure, industrial hygiene, emergency handling procedures, environmental fate, regulatory requirements, and related areas, from core set of books, government documents, technical reports and selected primary journal literature; organized into individual chemical records
• IRIS - Integrated Risk Information System -- Toxicology data file containing data in support of human health risk assessment; focuses on hazard identification and dose-response assessment, and is reviewed by work groups of EPA scientists and represents EPA consensus. key data provided: EPA carcinogen classifications, unit risks, slope factors, oral reference doses, and inhalation reference concentrations
• ITER -- chemical risk information from authoritative groups worldwide, including the EPA, the ATSDR, Health Canada, the Dutch National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, as well as independent parties whose risk values have undergone peer review. From the Cincinnati based Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment.
• TOXLINE - Toxicology Bibliographic Information (1966-present) -- Citations to articles on biochemical, pharmacological, physiological, and toxicological effects of drugs and other chemicals; made up of 2 databases: TOXLINE Core are journal article citations from the MEDLINE database, and TOXLINE Special are research reports and journal articles from other sources. If you dislike the TOXLINE interface AND you are just looking for journal articles, you could use MEDLINE, either via Medical Ovid or FirstSearch or the free PubMed interface (same as using TOXLINE Core)
• TRI - Toxics Release Inventory (1995-2001)
  Contains information on the annual estimated releases of toxic chemicals to the environment and is based upon data collected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Mandated by the Superfund legislation, TRI's data covers air, water, land, and underground injection releases, as well as transfers to waste sites, and waste treatment methods and efficiency, as reported by industrial facilities around the United States. TRI also includes data related to source reduction and recycling. search by chemical or other name, chemical name fragment, or CAS Registry Number. Also searchable are facility or parent company name, state, city, county, or zip code. Search results can be limited to releases greater than a specified number of pounds, and individual releases can be summed together to display a total amount.

Suggestions for Literature Review

When doing a literature review on your substance, use the Toxicological Profile as a starting point. Note the dates of the most recent articles it cites, then you will need to find articles going back to that particular date. Use TOXLINE (or MEDLINE) to locate citations to articles.

Once you have citations to articles, use Find Magazines & Journals to locate the full article. The Journals @ UIS will tell you what we physically own as well as what we have available full text online via one of our databases.

If we don't have the journal at all, never fear! You have a couple options.

1. See if SIU School of Medicine Library has a subscription. They have a large collection of medical journals. We have full access to their library, as long as you are willing to travel to it. Hours and location.
2. Fill out the Interlibrary Loan form for the article. Please allow 1 to 3 weeks.

Guide originally written by Ielleen Miller, Instructional Services Librarian on August 25, 2004.