Informatics in Toxicology and Environmental Public Health

Overview

The use of information systems to support the areas of toxicology and environmental public health is necessarily extensive because of the large numbers of potentially toxic substances with which environmental health specialists and toxicologists must deal. In this chapter, the author presents a brief history of informatics in these areas and then proceeds to discuss in some detail the various categories of information systems that support environmental public health and medical toxicology. The author’s focus is on services available for unambiguous chemical identification, on bibliographic search and retrieval systems, on authoritative “factual” databases, on threat-identification databases, on diagnostic tools, on systems to support case management, and on surveillance systems. The chapter concludes with the presentation of an imaginary scenario in which many of the information tools discussed are brought to bear on an emergency posing a threat to public health.