science in ACTION
INNOVATIVE RESEARCH FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
www.epa.gov/research

ECOTOX Knowledgebase
EPA/600/F-18/260
What is the ECOTOX Knowledgebase?
The ECOTOX Knowledgebase is a comprehensive, publicly available application providing chemical environmental toxicity data on
aquatic life, terrestrial plants and wildlife. Data are curated from the scientific literature after an exhaustive search protocol. It is
updated quarterly and as of June 2018, data were available for over I 1,500 chemicals and 12,590 species from 47,800 references
capturing more than 910,400 test results.
In addition to facilitating efficient mining of ecotoxicology information, ECOTOX is used to develop and validate models to
extrapolate data from in vitro (cell-based) to in vivo (whole organism) effects and across species to evaluate the safety of chemicals.
The Knowledgebase is also useful for building quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models to predict toxicity based on
physical characteristics of a chemical's structure, as well as to conduct data gap and meta-analyses to support current or guide
future research and assessment needs.
Researchers
Each year, more reliance is placed on
published test data and data compilations, and
less on direct animal testing. The
comprehensive nature of the Knowledgebase
allows for efficient data mining while reducing
the need for animal tests.
Who

Decision Makers
Local, State and Tribal governments can
utilize the data to develop site-specific
criteria or interpret findings from
monitoring data for chemicals without
established criteria.
Risk Assessors
The collection of data in ECOTOX is uniquely suited for linking traditional biological effects used in regulatory
risk assessments with mechanistic responses at multiple levels of biological organization and across species.
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ECOTOX in ACTION
CHEMICAL SPILL RESPONSE: ECOTOX was used for the 2014 Elk River chemical spill when crude 4-methylcyclohexanemethanol
(MCHM) was released from a tributary into the Elk River in West Virginia, and the ECOTOX Knowledgebase provided unique access to
EPA toxicity data not published in scientific literature for assessment of risk to fish.
NATURAL DISASTER RESPONSE: In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, ECOTOX was used as a rapid source for toxicity data to
develop chemical benchmarks for water and sediment quality assessments (e.g. mercury, cyanide, heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons (PAH), pesticides, salinity).
INTERAGENCY RESOURCE: ECOTOX has been used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to assess
and remediate chemical spills in companion with NOAA's "Chemical Aquatic Fate and Effects" database, which is a software program that
risk assessors can use to estimate the fate and effects of thousands of chemicals, oils and dispersants.
RESEARCH IMPLEMENTATION RESOURCE: Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs) are frameworks that assemble knowledge
about biological events that can be used to help interpret how a stressor (e.g., chemical) can lead to an adverse health effect in an
organism. Current enhancements to the ECOTOX Knowledgebase are specifically aimed to further the development of AOPs for both
pathway discovery purposes and implementation of AOP frameworks in regulatory applications.
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Visit ECOTOX: https://www.epa.gov/ecotox/
1
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Research and Development
Updated August 2018

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science in ACTION
INNOVATIVE RESEARCH FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
www.epa.gov/research

SEARCH feature:
New SEARCH feature on the
Knowledgebase can be used to
select and search for data on a
specific Chemical (with a link to the
CompTox Dashboard to give you
more information about your
chemical) or Species, Effect, or
Endpoint of interest to find
information in the ECOTOX
Knowledgebase.
Learn More about ECOTOX 5.0

Parameters
Aquatic
Terrestrial
r

Refine and filter data searches
by 19 parameters and
customize output selections
from over 100 data fields
All Effects
All Endpoints
All Species
All Test Conditions
All Publication Options
About Search
Search is a great tool for retrieving data from the ECOTOX Knowledgebase if you know the
exact parameters you want to search.
The Search function provides a direct method to retrieve data that can be refined by limiting
the search based on specific parameters including but not limited to: Chemical, Species,
Endpoint, Control, and Media Type. Once you have selected your search options, you are able
to view the report in the browser or export to an Excel spreadsheet or delimited text format.
Choose a starting point below.
EXPLORE feature:
New EXPLORE feature on the
Knowledgebase can be used when the
exact parameters for a search are not
known. You can search by Chemical,
Species, or Effects. Additional data fields
allow you to customize your output
results.
About Explore
Explore is a great tool for searching the ECOTOX Knowledgebase if you do not know the exact
parameters you want to search, or would like a visual representation of general and specific
data trends.
The ECOTOX Knowledgebase Explore function is an interactive way to examine search paths by
Chemical, Species, and Effects. Once you've selected the path to explore, additional data fields
will be displayed to filter your data, e.g. Effects, Endpoints, Publication Year.
During the exploration there are also options to examine the data visually via plotting
functions. Once you have completed your exploration, you are able to select different options
for exporting the data.

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Scatter plots and donut plots are available in ECOTOX for data
visualization.
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DATA VISUALIZATION features:
New DATA VISUALIZATION features on the
knowledgebase can be used to view your results
while exploring data. Data plots are interactive.
Features allow you to hover over data points
and scroll to zoom in on specific sections of data
to get the information you need.
Visit ECOTOX: https://www.epa.gov/ecotox/
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Office of Research and Development
For More Information, Contact:
ECOTOX Support ecotox.support@epa.gov
Colleen Elonen elonen.colleen@epa.gov

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