toxportal

Hi,

I started toxportal in 2001 as a  personal project to bring together and quickly access web resources relevant to my work as an occupational / environmental and product safety toxicologist. Toxportal is a non-commercial, self-funded project. I do not at this moment offer consulting services.

With initial enthusiasm I collected, evaluated and listed a huge number of links, and built a meta-search engine (still available). Over time, the benefits of quality over quantity became obvious, and with new meta-databases such as chemIDplus and PubChem coming online, finding quality, peer-reviewed toxicological information has become a far more efficient undertaking, allowing quick access to comprehensive peer-reviewed data.

“In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king”

With judicious and critical use of the data referenced in these sources, it is possible to derive meaningful evidence of the hazards of untested compounds by “read-across” of the data from compounds of known toxicity that display similar properties and share structural entities (toxophores). Because this is teh real world, the read-across approach may not always yield satisfactory or reliable results, however I suggest it should be the first step in any chemical assessment.

Taking a reasoned approach, often leading to a degree of self-classification, the read-across approach has allowed the waiving of some animal tests, which are often required by regulatory authorities. Is it heartening to know that some regulatory assessors are becoming increasingly receptive to such approaches. This gives hope that the new EU chemical legislation, REACH will not result in the unecessary poisoning of, potentially, millions of animals. But there’s a long way to go yet! I’ll keep you posted.

Tools for chemical risk assessment….

I also do a spot of web programming. To date I have developed two programmes: the Risk Inventory Prioritization Tool, and a new quick-fire chemical metasearch called Up-Reach. These are made freely available here for anyone to use, though I must stress that they have not been independently evaluated, and should only be used by people who have a good grounding in toxicological risk assessment. The source code is also available for those interested in improving these tools.

My access logs reveal since toxportal began it has been accessed over half-a-million times!

Probably still only me

Note: If you have been trying to e-mail me, I’m afraid that due to persistent avalanches of spam and other nasty activities I had to remove my details from the site. Please forgive me for not responding. I will have this mess sorted out soon!

JH

Feb 2007