Resources for global risk assessment: the International Toxicity Estimates for Risk (ITER) and Risk Information Exchange (RiskIE) databases.

The rate of chemical synthesis and use has outpaced the development of risk values and the resolution of risk assessment methodology questions. In addition, available risk values derived by different organizations may vary due to scientific judgments, mission of the organization, or use of more recently published data. Further, each organization derives values for a unique chemical list so it can be challenging to locate data on a given chemical. Two Internet resources are available to address these issues. First, the International Toxicity Estimates for Risk (ITER) database (www.tera.org/iter) provides chronic human health risk assessment data from a variety of organizations worldwide in a side-by-side format, explains differences in risk values derived by different organizations, and links directly to each organization's website for more detailed information. It is also the only database that includes risk information from independent parties whose risk values have undergone independent peer review. Second, the Risk Information Exchange (RiskIE) is a database of in progress chemical risk assessment work, and includes non-chemical information related to human health risk assessment, such as training modules, white papers and risk documents. RiskIE is available at http://www.allianceforrisk.org/RiskIE.htm, and will join ITER on National Library of Medicine's TOXNET (http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/). Together, ITER and RiskIE provide risk assessors essential tools for easily identifying and comparing available risk data, for sharing in progress assessments, and for enhancing interaction among risk assessment groups to decrease duplication of effort and to harmonize risk assessment procedures across organizations.