Toxic Chemical Risk and Health Resources

Many online resources contain valuable information about toxic chemicals. Some of these are listed here. 

• ATSDR (Agency for Toxic Substances & Disease Registry) ToxFAQs: View factsheets that provide answers to the most frequently asked questions about hazardous substances found around hazardous waste sites and the effects of exposure on human health. Available in English and Spanish.

• Learn the Issues: Chemicals and Toxics: Get information about common chemical substances and learn what EPA is doing to reduce the potential risks associated with them.
• CDC's National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network: Find integrated health, exposure, and hazard information and data from a variety of national, state and city sources.

• EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS): View EPA human health assessment information for more than 550 chemical substances. The IRIS database contains descriptive and quantitative carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic health risk information.
• EPA's National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA): View EPA's ongoing comprehensive evaluation of air toxics in the U.S. NATA is a screening tool local, state and tribal agencies can use to prioritize pollutants, emission sources and locations of interest for further study in order to gain a better understanding of risks. The most recent version of NATA is from 2014.

• Health Effects Notebook for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Get detailed information about the health effects of hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) for nearly every HAP specified in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.

• Evaluating Exposures to Toxic Air Pollutants: A Citizen's Guide: Learn how EPA determines how much of a toxic air pollutant people are exposed to and how many people are exposed.

• Risk Assessment for Toxic Air Pollutants: A Citizen's Guide: Find out about risk assessment, which is the process used to estimate the risk of illness from a specific human exposure to a toxic air pollutant.
• Mercury in Your Environment: Learn more about mercury and what is being done to protect your health.