TOXMAP: Environmental Health Maps

Background

According to the (archived) National Institute of Health (NIH) website and fact sheet on TOXMAP:

TOXMAP® is a Geographic Information System (GIS) from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) that uses maps of the United States to help users visually explore data from the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and Superfund Programs.

Federal law requires facilities in certain industries, which manufacture, process, or use significant amounts of toxic chemicals, to report annually on their releases of these chemicals to the EPA TRI Program. Superfund sites are those throughout the United States and its territories which contain substances that are either designated as hazardous under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), or identified as such under other laws.

TOXMAP helps users create nationwide, regional, or local area maps showing where TRI chemicals are released on-site into the air, water, and ground. It also identifies the releasing facilities, color-codes release amounts for a single year or year range, and provides multi-year aggregate chemical release data and trends over time, starting with 1988. Maps can also show locations of Superfund sites on the National Priority List (NPL), listing all chemical contaminants present at these sites.

Two versions of TOXMAP are available: the classic version of TOXMAP released in 2004, and a version based on Adobe® Flash/Flex technology. In addition to many of the features of TOXMAP classic, this version provides an improved map appearance and interactive capabilities as well as a more current GIS look-and-feel. This includes seamless panning, immediate update of search results when zooming to a location, two collapsible side panels to maximize map size, and automatic size adjustment after a window resize. The new TOXMAP also has improved U.S. Census layers and availability by Census Tract (2000 and 2010), Canadian National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) data, U.S. EPA coal plant emissions data, U.S. commercial nuclear power plants, and improved and updated congressional district boundaries. Both versions of TOXMAP can be accessed from https://toxmap.nlm.nih.gov.

TOXMAP classic users can search the system by location (such as city, state, or ZIP code), chemical name, chemical name fragment, release medium, release amount, facility name and ID, and can filter results to those residing within a pre-defined or custom geographic region. Search results can be saved for use in other tools, and can also be viewed in Google Maps® and Google Earth®. Both versions of TOXMAP also overlay map data such as U.S. Census population information, income figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and health data from the National Cancer Institute and the National Center for Health Statistics.

NLM has an extensive collection of toxicology and environmental health references (TOXLINE®), as well as a rich resource of data on hazardous chemical substances (HSDB®) in the TOXNET® databases. These resources are easily linked to/from the TOXMAP search results. The data shown in TOXMAP comes from:

• • EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)
  • EPA’s Superfund Program/CERCLA
  • US Census
  • Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB®)
  • TOXLINE® (Toxicology Bibliographic Information)
  • Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)
  • NCI’s SEER*Stat Database
  • EPA’s Air Markets Program Data (AMPD)
  • National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
  • Environment Canada
  • Nuclear Regulatory Commission

TOXMAP is a project of the Specialized Information Services Division of the NLM and supports its mission of addressing toxicology and environmental health information needs.

The database was pulled from the internet by the Trump administration in December 2019. The NLM said in a statement that much of the information remained available from the original sources, and that thus the database could be removed; critics, such as the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, suggested it was part of a larger effort on the part of the administration to obfuscate the detrimental results of the rollback of Obama-era environmental regulations.

Document Archive

Combined three .pdf files (NLM.pdf x 3)

NLM-Combined.pdf [2,490 Pages, 293MB] (Please note: Large file. Right click and download to hard drive for easier viewing.)

Released E-Mails with Attachments

Drafts In Progress – Extended NPA Deliverables (Email 1of2).msg

Hello all,

For your initial review, attached is in-progress version of 1 of the 2 deliverables the MITRE team has been working on. A second email will follow; file sizes are larger than usual.

• • NLM PfM Training v 0.7.pptx – 8 comprehensive modules from which tailored training can be designed and delivered for specific audiences

Though these files are very much draft and still being worked, we look forward to a discussion next week as to whether the information being provided ‘hits the mark’ and will meets users’ needs. I’ll send out an invite for Wednesday 5/22 3-4pm. In the meantime, please feel free to email over comments if you have a chance to review the documents at all prior to a meeting. They are both lengthy so require some time to absorb! The developer’s guide is written as a How-To manual so technical in presentation.

Best regards,

Beth

Attachments

NLM PfM Training v 0.7.pptx [7.5MB]

no subject.msg

(No body text)

Attachments

Charleston 11.04.19 PFB.pptx [80MB]

RE Minutes Leadership Meeting March 20 2019 Tracking Progress.msg

.msg file was damaged. On April 17, 2020, NIH sent screen shots as they could not get the .msg to open properly either. The screen shots are below.

SIS Website updates (Draft email to OCCS).msg

Dasith,

Thank you for joining our meeting this morning on the sunsetting of the SIS program. We covered a lot of material and are happy for your help in getting a lot of work executed quickly. Your input was helpful.

I have attached an updated mock-up of the main SIS homepage to reflect what we need done to alert users of changes taking place. Also included are a Word document with the language to be added to the pages and a zip file with the current/approved NLM logos for use on the banners.

We would like to see a couple of options for the banners (some in a box, shown in various colors, and in bold or italics). While it may not be possible to have the message shown exactly the same on each of the unique pages, we would like to keep the look as close as possible. I included all of the logos, as the style and color may need to vary based on the space and color of each page.

Since we need to have the pages updated and the changes made live on Monday, July 1^st, we need to move on this quickly. Please let me know if you have any questions before you get started.

Again, thank you for your help!

Best,

Grace

Attachments

scan0001.pdf [0.8MB]

SISSunsetWebLanguage_062519.docx [15kb]

SISSunsetWebLanguage_062519.docx [2.3MB]

 

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