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Fact Sheet
TOXMAP: Environmental Health Maps

four images, of a map image, an industry, a TOXMAP trends map,a TOXMAP Superfund mapQR Code for accessing 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:

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.

For more information, contact:
Specialized Information Services
National Library of Medicine
Two Democracy Plaza, Suite 510
6707 Democracy Boulevard, MSC 5467
Bethesda, MD 20892-5467
Telephone: (301) 496-1131
FAX: (301) 480-3537
E-mail: tehip@teh.nlm.nih.gov
URL: https://sis.nlm.nih.gov

For information on NLM services, contact:
National Library of Medicine
Customer Service
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894
Telephone: 1-888-FINDNLM (1-888-346-3656) or (301) 594-5983
e-mail: custserv@nlm.nih.gov
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