The National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB): Background, recent enhancements and future plans

Abstract

The National Library of Medicine's (NLM) Division of Specialized Information Services (SIS) Toxicology and Environmental Health Information Program is responsible for the management of the online Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB). HSDB, a part of NLM's Toxicology Data Network (TOXNET ® ), is a file of chemical/substance information with one record for each specific chemical or substance, or for a category of chemicals or substances. Like the rest of TOXNET's databases and other resources, HSDB is available online at no cost to global users. HSDB has approximately 5,600 chemicals and substances, with a focus on toxicology information and also on human exposure, industrial hygiene, emergency handling procedures, environmental fate, regulatory requirements, and related areas of likely interest to HSDB users. All data are from a core set of books, government documents, technical reports, selected primary journal literature, and other online sources of information, with a goal of linking the HSDB content to as much publicly available information as possible. HSDB's content is peer-reviewed by a Scientific Review Panel of experts covering the scope of HSDB content. Recent enhancements include the addition of chemical structures to HSDB records, the addition of new subfields such as age groups for human data, more occupational exposure standards, and the addition of information on numerous nanomaterials. Examples of future plans include providing more exposure-related information, e.g., uses of a chemical or substance in consumer products; the addition of information summaries aimed towards consumers and other members of the public wanting to learn about a chemical or substance; more visual content such as diagrams (images) of the pathways of metabolism of a substance; and enhanced search features and navigation.

Getting the most out of PubChem for virtual screening

“…PubChem also contains toxicological information on chemicals that are of interest in environmental and human health, contributed by the Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB). 60 …”

“…The PubChem Compound database provides manually curated information on the metabolism for more than five thousand compounds, collected from data contributors such as HSDB 60 and DrugBank. 48 Moreover, more than nine thousand compounds have links to the corresponding records in the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB), 103 which offers comprehensive information on metabolites.…”

The STEP database through the end-users eyes—USABILITY STUDY

“…However none of these databases cover animal as well as human data. The National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) TOXNET database (Fonger et al, 2014) provides the human health effects and animal studies excerpts. It utilizes an extensive look-up-table of chemical structures and chemical names linked to either the central toxicity database websites or to specific records of primarily textual information pertaining to chemical toxicity.…”

“…TOXNET, Vitic database, Symyx, AcTOR etc.) do not provide complete and/or comparative information on safe use and acceptability of excipients in paediatrics and are built for different purpose (Fonger et al, 2014;Powles-Glover and Edwards, 2011). Also most of the existing databases have organized the information in free text format and thus often do not have the capability to filter the data as per needs.…”

Micro-sized TiO2 catalyst in powder form and as coating on porcelain grès tile for the photodegradation of phenol as model pollutant for water phase

“…In spite of these advantages, many authors evidenced serious problems connected with the use of nano-sized materials: on one hand difficulty on sample handling, separation and collection, on the other hand possible side-effects on human health [13][14][15][16][17].…”