Hosted by the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the website was beneficial to researchers, journalists, and environmental advocates.
TOXMAP was a go-to site that provided clearly labeled information on toxic release sites and offered extensive health and demographic data, like mortality rates, that users could easily overlay on to the maps. The website also provided information on chemicals, household protections in using certain chemicals as well as health risks.
While most of the information from TOXMAP has been dispersed to other websites, some information has disappeared, reports Newsweek.
“Several resources in TOXNET [the Toxicology Data Network, of which TOXMAP was a part] came from other organizations, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and will continue to be available from those sources,” read a statement from the NLM. “Some databases will be retired.”
Many people are disturbed by the loss of the site, including Claudia Persico, an assistant professor at American University specializing in public administration and environmental policy, who says the site’s disappearance is a blow to researchers, reports Popular Science.
“I think it’s really sad that they’re getting rid of this,” she said. “It was stunning to me that the National Library of Medicine is actually retiring this pretty essential tool for our environmental right-to-know.”
NLM has only offered a brief explanation for retiring the site, but does say that “selected TOXMAP data” could be found scattered among nine other U.S. and Canadian government websites. And while it is true that with enough searches and some digging, most of the information can still be found online, gone is the ease of finding data easily with TOXMAP.
