What We Do

Tens of thousands of chemicals are currently in use, and hundreds more are introduced every year. Because current chemical testing is expensive and time consuming, only a small fraction of chemicals have been evaluated fully for potential human health effects.

EPA’s National Center for Computational Toxicology is working to figure out how to change the current approach used to evaluate the safety of chemicals. NCCT researchers integrate advances in biology, biotechnology, chemistry, and computer science to identify important biological processes that may be disrupted by the chemicals.

The combined information helps prioritize chemicals based on potential human health risks. Using computational toxicology research, thousands of chemicals can be evaluated for potential risk at small cost in a very short amount of time.

NCCT’s research is part of EPA's broader Chemical Safety for Sustainability (CSS) Research Program. Working closely with CSS, NCCT actively engages a wide-range of stakeholders to help make this new chemical information more understandable and useable.

Learn more about EPA’s computational toxicology research (PDF) (2 pp, 898 K, About PDF).

NCCT-Managed Research

• ACToR: Aggregated Computational Toxicology Resource
• Distributed Structure-Searchable Toxicity (DSSTox) Public Database Network
• ExpoCast
• ToxCast
• Tox 21
• Virtual Tissues

Organization

Rusty Thomas, Director

• Phone: 919-541-4219
• Email: thomas.russell@epa.gov

Kevin Crofton, Deputy Director

• Phone: 919-541-2672
• Email: crofton.kevin@epa.gov