General

4/03/2008
Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC) Launched

The DIMRC web site provides access to quality disaster health information at all stages of preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery. Initially, the site will focus on NLM and NLM-supported resources and activities. It will then expand to include other sources of authoritative disaster health information.

DIMRC collects, organizes, and disseminates health information for natural, accidental, or deliberate disasters.  The Center is committed to providing this information as part of the federal effort to help prepare for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the adverse health effects of disasters. It will work with federal, state, and local government, private organizations, and local communities.

2/13/2008
Drug Information Portal Released

The NLM Drug Information Portal gives the public, healthcare professionals, and researchers a gateway to current, accurate and understandable drug information from the National Library of Medicine and other key government agencies.

More than 15,000 drug records are available for searching. The search interface is straightforward, requiring only a drug name as a search term, and successful searching is enhanced by the assistance of a spellchecker. The Drug Information Portal offers a varied selection of resources and focused topics in medicine and drug-related information, with links to individual resources with potential drug information and summaries tailored to various audiences. General drug categories from MeSH are also included in the Drug Portal records.

2/2/2008
Special Populations: Emergency and Disaster Prepared

A new Web page, Special Populations: Emergency and Disaster Preparedness, is available on the Specialized Information Services (SIS) Web site. The page provides relevant information regarding the needs of special population groups in planning and preparation before, and response and recovery after disasters and emergencies. It was created after natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires, diseases such as SARS and West Nile Virus, and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 illustrated the need to ensure widespread access to knowledge about populations with unique needs in these emergencies. The population groups addressed include the mentally and physically disabled, senior citizens, minority, ethnic and language groups, women and children and others whose situations require different or specialized measures be taken in disaster preparedness and recovery. Also includes links to information in languages other than English.

Environmental Health & Toxicology

4/17/08
TRI 2006 Released

The new TRI 2006 release contains 87,870 records. TRI87-2006 now has 1,738,086 records. There were two changes to reporting requirements for the 2006 data. Facilities were required to submit appropriate North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes rather than the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes previously used. To do trends analysis, EPA assigned NAICS codes to prior years' data, so now both SIC codes and NAICS codes are searchable on TOXNET. EPA also expanded Form A eligibility to include PBT chemicals in 2006.

4/17/08
TOXMAP: Now Includes TRI 2006, Updated Health Data

TOXMAP now includes the 2006 Toxics Release Inventory data (TRI).

2/12/08
TOXMAP: New Health Data, Roads

TOXMAP now contains updated cancer and other mortality data. TOXMAP also now shows more detailed roads at a variety of map scales. (Roads and other reference data can be hidden from maps via the "Other Data" subtab.)

Other recent changes include:

• Facility details include latitude/longitude and links to Google Maps
• Redesigned Search and Set Region pages
• Added "go to" page number for search results
• Added aggregate release data values in downloadable TRI facility data
• Added HTML Site Map; Added Income 2003 demographic layer
• Added ability to link directly to site details (all map types).

1/10/08
Carcinogenic Potency Database (CPDB)

CPDB, the Carcinogenic Potency Database, was developed by the Carcinogenic Potency Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It reports analyses of animal cancer tests on 1547 chemicals. Results for each chemical are now searchable via TOXNET.

CPDB includes 6540 chronic, long-term animal cancer tests (both positive and negative for carcinogenicity) from the general published literature as well as from the National Cancer Institute and the National Toxicology Program. Such tests are used in support of cancer risk assessments for humans. Information that is important in the interpretation of bioassays is reported in CPDB for each experiment.

Users can search for results on each chemical in TOXNET via chemical name or name fragment, or by Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number (RN). Results include a summary for each sex-species tested, including carcinogenicity, target organs, and carcinogenic potency values. Detailed results from each experiment on the particular chemical are given in a plot format suitable for screen viewing. Chemical structure, InChI, and SMILES codes are reported

10/24/07
New Enviro-Health Link on the California Wildfires released

The California Wildfires Enviro-Health Link includes information on the health effects from fires and exposure to smoke; links to air quality resources, environmental clean-up following fires, and animals in disasters. In addition, resources for emergency responders and information in Spanish are also included. Searches of NLM databases, such as MedlinePlus, PubMed, TOXLINE, Tox Town, Haz-Map and TOXMAP are provided for additional health information. This web page is designed to help the emergency responders, health care providers, public health workers, and the general public find authoritative and timely information about key health concerns from wildfires.

10/24/07
Dietary Supplements Labels Database released

The National Library of Medicine has released a new resource focused on dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplements Labels Database includes information from the labels of over 2,000 brands of dietary supplements in the marketplace, including vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, and other specialty supplements.

The database is designed to help both the general public and health care providers find information about ingredients in brand-name products, including name, form, active and inactive ingredients, amount of active ingredient/unit, manufacturer/distributor information, suggested dose, label claims, warnings, percentage of daily value, and further label information.

Links to other NLM resources, such as MedlinePlus and PubMed, are provided for additional health information. In addition, links to related Fact Sheets from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS), National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are also available.

10/22/07
WISER for Smartphone is now available

WISER is now supported on Windows Mobile Smartphones, which consist of Windows Mobile devices that do not have a touch screen (do not use a stylus). (Note that Windows Mobile phones with a touch screen are already supported by WISER for Pocket PC.) The new WISER for Smartphone release is functionally equivalent to ourPocket PC version of WISER, and can be downloaded from http://wiser.nlm.nih.gov.

Please be sure to read the system requirements and installation instructions that are in the README, which is linked to on the download page and included in the installation. Some users may run into storage space limitations when installing WISER for Smartphone; procedures for resolving such issues are included in the README.

10/1/07
Toxie the Cat can now speak Spanish/ Toxie the Cat ahora habla español

Toxie, the ToxMystery guide cat, has gone back to school and can now speak Spanish. By selecting the Espanol or English tab on the upper right of the home page,ToxMystery gamers can move between Spanish and English as they explore the site's "house of hazards."

ToxMystery en español's "Para los padres" (For Parents) page gives parents more detailed information about potential household hazards. The teachers' "Para maestros" page has lesson plans and downloadable classroom activity pages in Spanish. ToxMystery can be used in science and health classes.

Come play with Toxie and see if you can find the hazards in English and en español!

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