5 Explore Chemicals
How do I identify what type of information is available for a specific chemical?
From the ChemExpo homepage, identify a chemical of interest by typing in the chemical name, CASRN or DTXSID in the main search bar and pressing the Enter key. Navigate to the ‘Chemicals’ tab to view the resulting chemicals available in ChemExpo. Clicking on a specific chemical DTXSID takes the user to the Chemical Detail page.
If the DTXSID is known, Users can access the chemical page directly by replacing the DTXSID of interest within the page URL:
https://comptox.epa.gov/chemexpo/chemical/DTXSID#######/
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Users can view, filter, and download data related to a specific chemical of interest on the Chemical Detail page. The page displays any Product Use Categories (PUCs) whose products contain the searched chemical, as well as tables containing information on Products, Data Documents, Function Categories (FCs), and Chemical List Presence Keyword (List Keyword) Sets associated with a chemical. To view any data associated with a chemical of interest, use the Information Category Table Tabs at the bottom of the page. The details of each tab are described in Table A.1.
5.1 Product Data
How do I filter the available information for a chemical to a specific Product Use Category (PUC?)
To filter the available information for a chemical to a specific PUC, use the PUC bubble plots (Figure 5.1). There are three bubble plots that organize PUCs by kind: Formulation, Article, and Industrial/Occupational PUCs. Click on the filter icon next to any PUC to filter the ‘Products’ ‘Documents’, and ‘Functional Use’ tables below the PUC bubble plots to show all entries related to the PUC of interest.
When filtering on the coarsest PUC level (General Category) only products that have not been assigned a lower-level Product Family or Product Type will appear in the filtered table. Expand the PUC menu to the left of the bubble plots to identify products associated with more refined PUC levels.
How do I identify what specific consumer products have been associated with a chemical?
To identify what types of products have been associated with a chemical, view the ‘Products’ tab (Figure 5.2). The table displays all products containing the specified chemical of interest. For each product entry, the table lists the associated data document PUC, PUC Kind and PUC Classification method. The classification method describes how the product was assigned to the given PUC (e.g., via manual or automated assignment). Users can filter the table by PUC kind and Classification Method, for instance to find only ‘Industrial/Occupational’ use products. Users can also use the search field right above the table to filter the table based on data in any of the available columns. Users can also access (via clicking on product or document names) the individual Product or Data Document pages, as well as the detail page for any PUC in the table.
5.2 Additional Chemical Information
How can I find additional information (e.g., chemical property or toxicity information) for a chemical reported in a specific consumer product?
To find additional chemical property or toxicity information related to a chemical of interest, access the CompTox Chemicals Dashboard. On the Chemical Detail page, the linked DTXSID below the chemical name header will take the user to an external EPA Website for the public CompTox Dashboard (Figure 5.3). This chemical page provides links to additional information related to the chemical.
The CompTox Chemicals Dashboard is also linked from ChemExpo via the DTXSID on each chemical card on the Data Document page. For curated chemicals, users can click on the DTXSID to be redirected to the Dashboard chemical landing page.
5.3 Chemical List Presence Data
How do I filter the documents associated with a chemical to those associated with a specific Chemical List Presence Keyword set?
To filter the documents associated with a chemical to those associated with a specific keyword set, use the List Keyword Sets filter. Click on the ‘Associated List Presence Keyword Sets’ banner (see Figure 5.2) below the bubble plots to expand the list of all keyword sets related to this chemical. Click on the filter icon next to any keyword set to filter the ‘Documents’ table below to show all Chemical Presence documents associated with that keyword set.
5.4 Function Data
How do I identify what types of Function Categories (FCs) have been associated with a chemical?
ChemExpo keeps track of two different, but related, functional uses for chemicals: their reported function and their harmonized Function Category (FC). Reported function is the exact text that the data source used to describe the function of a chemical substance. Harmonized Function Category is a curation of the reported function to the standardized list of FCs. To identify what reported functions have been associated with a chemical, use the ‘Function Categories’ tab (see Figure 5.2). The “Function” table shows all reported functions and FCs associated with the chemical. Users can use the search bar above the table to filter it to a unique FC.