By Matthew T. Martin

Scientist preparing a well-plate for high-throughput screening.

Ever open that cabinet under the kitchen sink, grab that bright blue bottle of window cleaner and wonder exactly what sort of chemicals are floating around in it? Many of you have at one time or another, and for those of you who have never given it a second thought rest assured that my colleagues and I at EPA are dedicated to identifying and categorizing all of the chemicals we might be exposed to on any given day. However, due the expensive, time-consuming process of traditional testing, which assesses one chemical at a time, only a small fraction of the tens of thousands of chemicals currently in commerce have been adequately assessed for potential human and environmental health risks.

To close this data gap and better evaluate potential health risks, we have worked hard in recent years to accelerate the pace of chemical testing. I am proud to say that we have now completed phase two of the multi-year Toxicity Forecaster (ToxCast) project and are publically releasing ToxCast data on 1,800 chemicals evaluated in over 700 high-throughput screening assays. This is a significant accomplishment that we want to share with the scientific community.

The new data is accessible through the new interactive Chemical Safety for Sustainability (iCSS) Dashboard, a web-based application for users to access and interact with the data freely at their own discretion. Users can select the chemicals and data of interest and then score the information to help inform chemical safety decisions.

As part of the data release, I hope the scientific community will take advantage of this new windfall of data and become involved in the ToxCast project by participating in the Predictive Toxicology Challenges. The first two challenges of the series, available through TopCoder and InnoCentive crowd sourcing technology, will ask the scientific and technology community to develop new algorithms to predict lowest effect levels (LELs) of chemicals using the new ToxCast data. Winners will receive monetary prizes to help fund their own planned research, and their solutions will help us determine innovative ways to use ToxCast data to inform decisions made about the chemical safety.

Also, beginning January 14,we are also hosting several stakeholder outreach workshops and webinars to address potential challenges with data translation, accessibility, and any other troubleshooting issues that might arise during the initial data launch. This is an opportunity for the scientific community to provide input on data usage and offer immediate feedback about the new data and the iCSS dashboard.

About the author: Matthew T. Martin is a research biologist within EPA’s National Center for Computational Toxicology, where he is part of the ToxCast team and leads the CSS task for developing predictive models of toxicity using high-throughput screening data. He also serves as the project lead for developing the new CSS Dashboard Web Application.