IRIS Help
Welcome to the IRIS Help page. On this page, you will find helpful tools to help you navigate the IRIS Website, download IRIS files, and find contact information if you have questions for IRIS. The page provides tips for successful searching as well as a glossary of IRIS terms, list of abbreviations and acronyms, explanation of the QuickView, and link to the National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings Browser to help ensure that differences in terminology do not impede your efforts to use IRIS. The page also links you to the IRIS Chemical Assessment Tracking System so you can find out what chemical substances are being assessed by the IRIS program and how far along they are in the assessment process. The page also provides information on how you can download a "stand alone version" of the IRIS files, links you to the compendium of IRIS Toxicological Reviews and support documents, and includes links to other technical documents of interest to the IRIS user, such as the Internet Users Guide . If you have a technical question not addressed on the IRIS Website or you have a comment to improve the Website, contacts are listed below.
For technical questions about the scientific information
content in IRIS, please call the U.S. EPA Risk Information Hotline
at telephone (202)566-1676, or fax to (202)566-1749,
or email to hotline.iris@epa.gov.
EPA is continuously seeking to improve the IRIS Web site. Please
send your comments and suggestions for improvements to the IRIS webmaster
by email to Iris.Webmaster@epa.gov.
Helpful
Tools:
For a better understanding of terms used in IRIS, refer to the IRIS Glossary and Acronyms and Abbreviations linked below. The glossary contains definitions of terms used frequently in IRIS. It is intended to assist users in understanding terms utilized by the U.S. EPA in hazard and dose-response assessments. It is assumed that the user has some familiarity with risk assessment and health science. For terms that are not included in this glossary, the user should refer to standard health science, biostatistics and medical textbooks and dictionaries.
QuickView:
The IRIS Substance QuickView presents a snapshot of the information
available in the Full IRIS Summary. It is intended to be a quick reference
guide to key carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic data for each substance contained
within the IRIS database only. It is recommended that you read the full
IRIS summary to put this information into complete context.
The layout of the QuickView follows the same sectional formatting of the
Full IRIS Summary, and includes:
- Status of Data for Substance
- Chronic Health Hazard Assessments for NonCarcinogenic Effects
- Reference Dose for Chronic Oral Exposure (RfD)
- Reference Dose for Chronic Inhalation Exposure
(RfC)
- Carcinogenicity for Lifetime Exposure
- Weight of Evidence Characterization
- Quantitative Estimate of Carcinogenic Risk from
Oral Exposure
- Quantitative Estimate of Carcinogenic Risk from
Inhalation Exposure
- Substance Synonyms
Searching
IRIS:
For better search results, refer to the IRIS Search Tips page.
IRIS Chemical Assessment Tracking System:
The IRIS Chemical Assessment Tracking System is a compilation of status reports on EPA's IRIS assessments currently in progress. The Status Report shows the user where the chemical assessment is in its development. Definitions of the Milestones can be found below. An explanation of the IRIS assessment process can be found at US EPA's Process for IRIS Assessment Development and Review.
- Find Chemical Assessment Status
- View Detailed Tracking Report
Find Chemical Assessment Status:
View Detailed Tracking Report:
Background
to IRIS:
For a better understanding of the methods used by EPA for
deriving values in IRIS, refer to the IRIS Background Documentation. Also,
please refer to the limitations of IRIS documents.
Toxicological
Reviews & Support Documents:
Toxicological reviews and other support documents are available
for a number of IRIS substances.
Links from IRIS summaries to specific
pages in their accompanying toxicological reviews are available. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, available as a free download, to view these files. See EPA's PDF page to learn more about PDF, and for a link to the free Acrobat Reader.
Downloadable
Files:
A "Stand Alone Version" of IRIS files is available
in response to the needs of users traveling or with intermittent internet
access. These downloadable files allow users to have full access to the
IRIS Chemical Substance files without access to the Internet.
Internet Users Guide
This summary information represents EPA consensus positions developed through comprehensive review by EPA health scientists. Since July 1997, IRIS assessments are accompanied by support documents providing the reader with more detail on the rationale and justification for the conclusions given in the summaries.
NLM's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Browser:
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) Browser can be used to help you identify related terms for describing critical effects, precursor effects, and tumor types. It comprises NLM's
controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles, for cataloging books and
other holdings, and MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to retrieve
information that may use different terminology for the same concepts. For more information on how and why to use NLM's MeSH to help you search IRIS critical effects, precursor effects, and tumor types, refer to the full MeSH description.
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