Priority Substances List State of the Science Report for Aluminum Chloride, Aluminum Nitrate and Aluminum Sulfate

Appendix A: Search strategies for identification of relevant data

Environmental evaluation

Data relevant to the risk characterization of aluminum chloride, aluminum nitrate and aluminum sulfate to the environment were identified from existing review documents, published reference texts up to 1996 and on-line searches conducted between January and May 1996 of the following databases: Aqualine, ASFA (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts; 1996), BIOSIS (Biosciences Information Services; 1990-1996), CAB (Commonwealth Agriculture Bureaux), CESARS (Chemical Evaluation Search and Retrieval System, Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Michigan Department of Natural Resources; 1996), Chemical Abstracts (Chemical Abstracts Service, Columbus, Ohio), CHRIS (Chemical Hazard Release Information System; 1964-1985), Current Contents (Institute for Scientific Information; 1993-1996), ELIAS (Environmental Library Integrated Automated System, Environment Canada library; January 1996), Enviroline (R.R. Bowker Publishing Co.; November 1995 - June 1996), Environmental Abstracts (1975 - February 1996), Environmental Bibliography (Environmental Studies Institute, International Academy at Santa Barbara; 1990-1996), GEOREF (Geo Reference Information System, American Geological Institute; 1990-1996), HSDB (Hazardous Substances Data Bank, U.S. National Library of Medicine; 1990-1996), Life Sciences (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts; 1990-1996), NTIS (National Technical Information Service, U.S. Department of Commerce), Pollution Abstracts (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, U.S. National Library of Medicine), POLTOX (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, U.S. National Library of Medicine; 1990-1995), RTECS (Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances, U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; 1996), Toxline (U.S. National Library of Medicine; 1990-1996), TRI93 (Toxic Chemical Release Inventory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Toxic Substances; 1993), USEPA-ASTER (Assessment Tools for the Evaluation of Risk, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; up to December 21, 1994), WASTEINFO (Waste Management Information Bureau of the American Energy Agency; 1973 - September 1995) and Water Resources Abstracts (U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior; 1990-1996). Following the initial research, Current Contents was used to maintain an ongoing record of the current scientific literature pertaining to the potential environmental effects of aluminum salts. Data obtained after January 1999 were not considered in the report.

In addition, a survey of Canadian industry was carried out under authority of Section 16 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA) (Environment Canada, 1997b). Companies were required to provide information on uses, releases, environmental concentrations, effects or other data that were available to them and related to aluminum salts

Health evaluation

Data relevant to the characterization of potential effects on human health were identified on the basis of a review prepared in 1997 by BIBRA Toxicology International, a Toxicological Profile for aluminum prepared by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, 1999) and an assessment report on aluminum prepared in 1997 by a Task Group of the International Programme on Chemical Safety (WHO, 1997). In addition, critical reviews updating the information in the WHO (1997) assessment were prepared in the areas of epidemiology (Smiargiassi, 1999), mode of neurotoxicity of aluminum (Savory, 2000) and the bioavailability of aluminum (Yokel and McNamara, 2000).

To identify data relevant to the estimation of exposure of the general population to aluminum chloride, aluminum nitrate or aluminum sulfate, literature searches were conducted using the strategy of searching by their names, CAS registry numbers and major synonyms in the following databases: Amicus (National Library of Canada), BIOSIS, CAB Abstracts, CISTIMON (Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information list of monographs, National Resesarch Council of Canada), ELIAS, Enviroline, Environmental Bibliography, Food Science and Technology Abstracts, Microlog (Canadian Research Index, Government Publications, Micromedia Ltd.) and Pollution Abstracts (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, U.S. National Library of Medicine).

In addition to the above sources of information, officials of provincial and territorial governments as well as the Food Directorate, the Product Safety Bureau, the Therapeutic Products Programme and the Laboratory Centre for Disease Control of Health Canada were contacted to obtain information relevant to this characterization. Data obtained after January 2000 were not considered in the characterization.