Department of Environmental & Aquatic Animal Health - Research Programs & Projects

Environmental Toxicology and Risk Assessment

• Long-term Water Quality Trends in Virginia Waterways Potomac, Shenandoah, James River, Rappahannock River, Roanoke River, Chowan River, Dismal Swamp River, Big Sandy, Clinch-Powell, Holston, Small Coastal Basins and Chesapeake Bay, York River, New River and Out of State. 

• Oak Ridge (ORNL) Ecological Risk Analysis This extremely useful site contains information used to do ecological risk assessments including screening benchmarks for aquatic biota, wildlife, terrestrial plants, sediments, and soil organisms. There are numerous guidance documents for radiation effects, bioaccumulation, petroleum waste in soils, wildlife exposure, the general approach to ecological risk assessment, and examples of completed risk assessments from the U.S. DOE Oak Ridge Facility. 

• U.S. EPA IRIS Database The Integrated Risk Information System is a human health effects database maintained by the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development, National Center for Environmental Exposure.  

• U.S. EPA Rates and Constants A comprehensive compilation of Rates, Constants and Kinetics Formulations in Surface Water Quality Modeling (Second Edition), EPA/600/3-85/040 used to select such for fate modeling.  

• AQUIRE, ECOTOX, TERRETOX, ASTER These UNIX-based, ecological effects databases are maintained by the U.S. EPA NHEERL Mid-Continent Ecology Division (Telephone: 218-529-5225, FAX: 218-529-5003, E-Mail: outreach@superior.dul.epa.gov). AQUIRE (Aquatic Toxicity information Retrieval Database) presently contains more than 169,000 test records. AQUIRE Provides quick access to a comprehensive, systematic, computerized compilation of aquatic toxic effects data. AQUIRE data can also be searched with ASTER and ECOTOX.  ASTER (Assessment Tools for the Evaluation of Risk) is designed to Assist regulators in hazard ranking and the development of comprehensive risk assessments ... [by integrating] database information and quantitative structure activity relationships (QSARs) to assess the environmental risk of discrete chemicals. ASTER produces output organized into the NAS paradigm components: hazard identification, environmental exposure assessment, ecotoxicological hazard assessment and ecological risk characterization.

• HEDS (Human Exposure Database System). HEDS is an integrated database system that contains chemical measurements, questionnaire responses, documents, and other information related to EPA research studies of the exposure of people to environmental contaminants.

• CHAD (Consolidated Human Activities Database) contains data obtained from pre-existing human activity studies that were collected at city, state, and national levels. CHAD is intended to be an input file for exposure/intake dose modeling and/or statistical analysis. CHAD is a master database providing access to other human activity databases using a consistent format. This facilitates access and retrieval of activity/and questionnaire information from those databases that EPA currently has access to-and-uses-in its various regulatory analyses undertaken by program offices.