TSCATS Standard Reports

From an EPA handout by Geraldine Nowak, Information Management Division:
"TSCATS (Toxic Substances Control Act Test Submissions) is an online index to unpublished, nonconfidential studies covering chemical testing results and adverse effects of chemicals on health and ecological systems. The studies are submitted by U.S. industry to EPA under several sections of the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA). There are four types of documents in the database: Section 4 chemical testing results, Section 8(d) health and safety studies, Section 8(e) substantial risk of injury to health or the environment notices, and voluntary documents submitted to EPA known as a For Your Information (FYI) notice."

This topic contains a single "standard report", a form for types of searches that are often done on TSCATS data.

If you have any questions, comments, or found any bugs in these reports please either send Email or call us at 202-234-8494. We may also by able to assist you with more complex reports as long as you give us at least one week of lead time.

Level of Detail Field

This field selects the level of detail you want in your report: This field selects the level of detail you want in your report: LOW, MEDIUM, or HIGH detail. Each of these is explained below.

LOW
: The report will produce a description of each "reference" matching the search criteria. Specific chemical names, study types, and abstracts will not be included.
MEDIUM
: The same as LOW, but a list of specific chemicals and study types will be included.
HIGH
: The same as MEDIUM, but the full text of abstracts will be included when it is available.

Output Type Field

This field selects what output style your report will have:
Text
The report will produce human-readable ASCII text.
Comma-delimited ASCII
The report will produce a table of data with the columns separated by commas. Character fields will by surrounded by double quotes so that any commas in them won't be read as column delimiters. This style of output is suitable for loading into a database such as Dbase.
Tab-delimited ASCII
The report will produce a table of data with the columns separated by tabs. This style of output is suitable for loading into databases such as Excel.

Submitter Name Field

Fill in the organization name of the submitter in this field if you know it.

Warning!Organization names are often misspelled when submitted to EPA. In addition, some organizations change their names from year to year. For these reasons, enter as few letters as are necessary to specify the organization, followed by a "*" to represent any number of letters. This will help you find it even if its name changes or is misspelled. Example: You want to find Du Pont submissions. Possible spellings of organization name:

  1. DU PONT CO.
  2. E. I. DU PONT DE NEMEURS
  3. DUPONT
  4. DU PONT MICHIGAN PLANT
If you entered "DU PONT" into the name field, you wouldn't have found any of these spellings. On the other hand, if you entered "DU PONT*", you would have found spellings 1 and 4. To find all of these you would need to enter "*DU*PONT*".

Contractor Name Field

Fill in the organization name of the contractor -- the organization paid to actually carry out testing -- in this field if you know it.

Warning!Organization names are often misspelled when submitted to EPA. In addition, some organizations change their names from year to year. For these reasons, enter as few letters as are necessary to specify the organization, followed by a "*" to represent any number of letters. This will help you find it even if its name changes or is misspelled. Example: You want to find Du Pont submissions. Possible spellings of organization name:

  1. DU PONT CO.
  2. E. I. DU PONT DE NEMEURS
  3. DUPONT
  4. DU PONT MICHIGAN PLANT
If you entered "DU PONT" into the name field, you wouldn't have found any of these spellings. On the other hand, if you entered "DU PONT*", you would have found spellings 1 and 4. To find all of these you would need to enter "*DU*PONT*".

Submission Type Field

There are 4 types of documents in the database: Section 4 chemical testing results, Section 8(d) health and safety studies, Section 8(e) substantial risk of injury to health or the environment notices, and voluntary documents submitted to EPA known as a For Your Information (FYI) notice. This field lets you choose the type of submission if desired. There are sub-categories of the above; for instance different subsections under Section 4, or the 8(e) CAP program.

Category Name Field

References are classified by category. This can be a chemical category or a general type of testing or research.

Chemical Name Field

Each individual chemical in the reference is listed. Using this field you can search by specific chemical names.

CAS number Field

CAS numbers are given for indivudal chemicals. Don't fill in dashes if you choose to search by CAS number.

Study Type Field

Studies are assigned keywords from a restricted list in order to classify them by type. You can search for a specific type of study by using these keywords.

Organism Type Field

Studies are assigned keywords from a restricted list in order to classify them by the type of organism used. You can search for a specific type of organism by using these keywords.

Exposure Route Field

Studies are assigned keywords from a restricted list in order to classify them by the type of exposure route. You can search for a specific type of exposure route by using these keywords.

Document Number Field

Docuemnts are assigned numbers by EPA. If you already know the document number of a single document that you want, you can enter that document number in order to search for it.

Microfiche Number Field

Docuemnts are assigned microfiche numbers by EPA. If you already know the microfiche number of a single document that you want, you can enter that number in order to search for it.