Environmental and Health Data

Health Datapalooza III Data LabJune 5, 2012

Steve Young, Senior Advisor, EPAYoung.Steve@epa.gov

(This document does not represent an official position of EPA.For conference/training purposes only.)

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Why?

The Pew Commission -- on America’s Environmental Health Gap, September 2000:

“…Gap in critical knowledge…”“…hinders our national efforts…”“…we remain… in the dark…”“We have the right to know more.”We’ve made progress since then, but the points

are still valid.

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EPA Has High-Value Data That Can Help

• National Center for Computational Toxicology• The Integrated Risk Information System• ECOTOX• The Toxics Release Inventory• And a few words on linked data

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EPA’s National Center for Computational Toxicology (NCCT)

• Epa.gov/ncct• ACToR

- Aggregated Computational Toxicology Resource

• ToxRefDB - Toxicity Reference Database• ExpoCastDB

- Exposure-Based Chemical Prioritization Database

• ToxCastDB - Toxicity Forecaster Database

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Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) and ECOTOX

• www.epa.gov/iris• IRIS provides information about human health

effects that may result from exposure to environmental contaminants, covering more than 550 chemical substances

• www.epa.gov/ecotox• ECOTOX provides chemical toxicity info for

terrestrial and aquatic life

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The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)

• Public data about facility releases and transfers of toxic chemicals

• Community right to know• Almost 25 years of data now available• TRI data can help identify situations that may

merit closer scrutiny• www.epa.gov/tri

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Linked Data• Based on 20-year-old Tim Berners-Lee idea• Linked Data is about publishing data into the Web to

enable data discovery, linking, and reuse• Relies on international Web standards that make data

machine-readable and linkable (e.g., RDF)• Pivotal role of open, persistent, unique identifiers for

key entities like author, article, chemical, etc.• Goal is to solve organizational issues related to data

silos, requirements for faster data integration, and reduced-budget environment

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“We Have the Right to Know More”

Credit: EPA, ca. 1973