| Confidence Level | PUC Classification Method | Code | Definition |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Manual Assignment | MA | Manual assignment of an individual product to a PUC. Available on the Product page. This assignment method has the highest level of confidence because curators view the individual product and source document, and assign a category based on their understanding of the product details. |
|
Automatic Conversion | AC | Conversion of AU assignments. In this process, curators review Automatic PUC Assignments and either ensure the assignment was correct (and assign AC) or unassign the AU PUC. |
|
Bulk Assign Product to PUC | MB | Assignment of products to PUCs based on Product title, Manufacturer, and Brand name keywords. This assignment method has medium confidence because curators assign multiple products at once based on the name, manufacturer, and brand. |
|
Bulk Assign Raw Category to PUC | BA | Assignment of products to PUCs based only on the “recommended product use” data extracted from documents within a data group. Curators bulk assign products to a single PUC based on the Raw Category, without viewing individual products. This assignment method has a low level of confidence because curators are not viewing individual products and relies on general product use data provided by manufacturers. |
|
Automatic | AU | Assignment of products to PUC using a machine learning model that predicts a PUC assignment for a product based on its name, brand, and manufacturer. |
6 Explore Products or Product Use Categories
6.1 Product Information in ChemExpo
What types of products are included in ChemExpo? Where can I find definitions for the different Product Use Categories (PUCs)?
Products in ChemExpo are categorized into Product Use categories (PUCs), which indicate the type of the product based on information provided in the original data source. More information can be found in Data Overview (Chapter 3). PUCs include consumer formulations, consumer articles, and industrial/occupational products. Definitions for the different product categories are found on the PUCs Summary Page.
6.2 Browsing PUCs and their Data
How do I browse the available Product Use Categories (PUCs) and their data? Users can browse the available PUCs via the Explore Products tab (on the main ChemExpo menu bar) or via the PUCs Summary page.
Users can click on the ‘Explore Products’ tab on the main ChemExpo navigation bar, to view bubble plots for all available PUCs. These visualizations are organized by PUC Kind, with three separate plots for Formulation, Article, and Industrial & Occupational PUCs. Users can click on any General Category in the tables to the left of the bubble plot to expand the PUC list to display lower-level Product Families and Product Types within the General Category. This also zooms in the corresponding bubble plot visualization. Users can also click the info button next to each PUC to access its detailed chemical and product data.
Users can access the PUC Summary table through the ‘Product Use Categories’ link on the homepage or clicking on ‘Get Data’ on the top ChemExpo menu and then clicking ‘Product Use Categories’, or directly through https://comptox.epa.gov/chemexpo/pucs/. The PUCs summary table can be searched and filtered using the search bar above the table. The table can also be sorted and filtered on each column, by clicking on any table column header and entering in a filter query. Users can also click the blue ‘View Detail’ button to access the PUC Detail page for a PUC of interest.
6.3 PUC Detail Pages
What information is provided on the PUC Detail Page?
The PUC Detail page (Figure 6.1) displays additional information related to a specific PUC, including the Kind, definition, allowed attributes, assumed attributes, and additional statistics. Users can also view available data based on Products, Documents, Chemicals and Function Categories related to a Product Category of interest (see sections below). The details of each tab are described in Table A.2. The Products and Chemicals tabs for PUCs are described in more detail in (Section 6.4 and Section 6.5)
6.4 Finding Products via PUCs
How do I find information about specific products associated with a Product Use Category (PUC)?
Users can find information about specific products associated with a PUC of interest via the PUC Detail page. The PUC Detail page is accessed via the Explore PUCs or PUC Summary page, as described in Section 6.3.
From the Products table, users can click on individual product entries to access more information about specific products on the Product page. There is also a Documents table on this page used to display the individual Data Documents associated with a PUC. Usually, there is a one-to-one relationship between a Document and Product but in some cases multiple products are defined in a single document. In this case, individual products are defined based on unique Universal Product Codes (UPCs) provided in the document. Specific products contain additional product details, such as brand name, manufacturer, and product description. Users can also access the linked document to access document metadata and chemical information. The PUC assigned to the product is also displayed on the Product page.
There are 5 different methods used to assign products to PUCs in ChemExpo. These are referred to as “PUC Classification Methods”. See Table 6.1 for more detail on each Classification Method, and how each is used to assign products to PUCs. The product Classification Method appears alongside product entries on Product tables across ChemExpo. Classification Methods are ranked in terms of level of confidence in the assignment, based on manual or automated assignment, and how much information is available to the curator. Note that the application only displays the highest confidence level PUC assigned to a particular product.
6.5 Chemical Data
How can I find all the chemicals that have been associated with a Product Use Category?
Users can find information about specific chemicals associated with a PUC of interest via the PUC Detail page. The PUC Detail page is accessed via the Explore PUCs or PUC Summary page, as described in the section above.
From the Chemicals table (accessed via the “Chemicals” tab in the center of the page), users can view all chemicals that have been curated to a specific PUC. The DTXSID column allows users to access the Chemical Detail page for more information on the specific chemical. The count is split into two columns, for Manual and Automatic counts. The Count indicates how many times the chemical appears in data documents that have been curated to the product use category, either via the manual classification methods, or via the automatic PUC classification method. The manual classification data are more reliable, but the automatic classifications allow more individual product documents to be identified as potentially relevant to a particular PUC. Users can refer to the product table on the PUC Detail page for data on the specific products that have been mapped in an automated manner.