Syracuse Research Corporation's Environmental Chemistry Program began in the early 1970's with the awarding of a number of contracts from EPA's Office of Toxic Substances (presently the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics - OPPT). The first several contracts were to evaluate and prioritize environmental fate and exposure testing. This was followed by a number of studies entitled "Investigation of Selected Potential Environmental Contaminants" that assessed the environmental fate and exposure, as well as the health and environmental effects of haloethers, aromatic nitro compounds, chlorinated paraffins, ketonic solvents, acrylamide, haloalkyl phosphates, 2-mercaptobenzothiazole, benzotriazoles, methyl halides, styrene and ethylbenzene, and epichlorohydrin, haloalcohols and epoxides. In the latter studies, SRC scientists reviewed not only environmental fate information, but also commercial chemistry and chemical marketing (production and use) information to assess the points of likely environmental release and occupational exposure. Subsequent studies focused on multimedia studies of polycyclic aromatics which examined such questions as chemical profiles of PAHs from various sources, ambient concentrations in various media, and total body burden from ambient, indoor, and occupational air, drinking water, and food. In 1979, SRC began the development of the Environmental Fate Data Base (EFDB) with two files, DATALOG and CHEMFATE. DATALOG is a bibliographic file indexed by the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) registry number and 18 types of environmental fate data:

In contrast to DATALOG, CHEMFATE is a data value file containing 25 categories of environmental fate and physical/chemical property information on commercially important chemical compounds. CHEMFATE contains actual experimental values on rate constants, experimental conditions, and physical properties. Physical properties can either be located with the DATALOG file or are available online in the CHEMFATE file.

Several years later, two other files were added to EFDB: the BIOLOG file which indexes microbial degradation/toxicity data in more detail than DATALOG, and the BIODEG file, which contains experimental values like CHEMFATE, but only on biodegradation studies, and includes evaluation codes that can be used for structure/biodegradability correlations. The BIOLOG file was partially developed from a card file maintained for the last 40 years by Dr. Martin Alexander of Cornell University. DATALOG contains 380,000 records for 16,800 chemicals, CHEMFATE contains 17,260 records on 1,728 chemicals, BIOLOG contains 70,000 records on 8,150 chemicals, and BIODEG contains 5, 820 records on 800 chemicals. At present, these files continue to be expanded by SRC with partial support from EPA. EFDB is offered online as a public service on this website. SRC also offers EFDB in a PC version, see our Databases.

Due to our experience in collecting, indexing, and reviewing environmental fate and exposure data, SRC was asked by the National Library of Medicine's Specialized Information Services to help design and maintain a new section for the Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB). For the last 15 years, SRC has used the EFDB to review and evaluate chemicals for the Exposure Fate/Exposure Potential section of HSDB.

Click here to view a sample entry prepared by SRC for the National Library of Medicine's Hazardous Substance Data Bank (HSDB). Search for more information on HSDB.

Research Publications
See our Research Publications section for a selected list of our recent publications organized by category and chronologically.

Special Topics and Chemical Classes
Listed are some chemicals and topics which we have investigated.

Recent Reports and Presentations
See our Recent Reports and Presentations section for presentations which can be viewed and reports which can be downloaded.