Priority Substances List Assessment Report for Hexachlorobutadiene

Appendix A Search Strategies Employed for Identification of Relevant Data

Environmental assessment

Relevant data were identified from existing review documents, published reference texts and on-line searches conducted between January and April 1996. The databases searched included the following: ASFA (Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts), BIOSIS (Biosciences Information Services), CAB (Commonwealth Agriculture Bureaux), CESARS (Chemical Evaluation Search and Retrieval System, Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Michigan Department of Natural Resources), CHRIS (Chemical Hazard Release Information System), Current Contents (Institute for Scientific Information), ELIAS (Environmental Library Integrated Automated System, Environment Canada Library), Enviroline (R.R. Bowker Publishing Co.), Environmental Abstracts, Environmental Bibliography (Environmental Studies Institute, International Academy at Santa Barbara), GEOREF (Geo Reference Information System, American Geological Institute), HSDB (Hazardous Substances Data Bank, U.S. National Library of Medicine), Life Sciences (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts), 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), RTECS (Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances, U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), Toxline (U.S. National Library of Medicine), TRI93 (Toxic Chemical Release Inventory, 1993, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Toxic Substances), USEPA-ASTER (Assessment Tools for the Evaluation of Risk, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), WASTEINFO (Waste Management Information Bureau of the American Energy Agency) and Water Resources Abstracts (U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior).

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 on HCBD that were available to them if they met the trigger quantity of 1 kg of HCBD per year. Reveal Alert was used to maintain an ongoing record of the current scientific literature pertaining to the environmental effects of HCBD. Data obtained after November 30, 1997 were not considered in this assessment unless they were critical data received during the 60-day public review of the report (July 1 to August 30, 2000).

Human health assessment

Evaluations of other agencies such as the International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS, 1994) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, 1994) were consulted and used to identify relevant data. Additional relevant data were identified through searches on the following databases in the fall of 1993: AQUAREF (Inland Waters Directorate, Environment Canada), CCRIS (Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information System, U.S. National Cancer Institute), ChemID (U.S. National Library of Medicine; available on the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System), CISTIMON (Canadian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information list of monographs, National Research Council of Canada), DART (Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology, U.S. National Library of Medicine), ELIAS (Environmental Library Integrated Automated System, Environment Canada library), EMIC (Environmental Mutagen Information Center database, Oak Ridge National Laboratory), EMICBACK (backfile of EMIC), Enviroline (R.R. Bowker Publishing Co.), Environmental Bibliography (Environmental Studies Institute, International Academy at Santa Barbara), ETICBACK (backfile of Environmental Teratology Information Center database, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences), Food Science and Technology Abstracts, GENE-TOX (Genetic Toxicology, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), HSDB (Hazardous Substances Data Bank, U.S. National Library of Medicine), IRIS (Integrated Risk Information System, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), Microlog (Canadian Research Index, Government Publications, Micromedia Ltd.), Pollution Abstracts (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, U.S. National Library of Medicine), RTECS (Registry of Toxic Effects of Chemical Substances, U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) and Toxline (U.S. National Library of Medicine). Since these initial searches, the Canadian Research Index, Current Contents, Dialog, Medline, Toxline and Toxnet have been searched on a regular basis to identify recent articles. A general search of Internet web sites was performed in July 1996. Only data acquired prior to December 1996 were considered in the determination of whether HCBD is "toxic" to human health.