Last month, this column explored parts of The National Institutes of Health Web site, www.nlm.nih.gov; we continue to discover what it has to offer this month. ToxTown is an interactive guide in both English and Spanish about how the environment, chemicals and toxic substances affect human health. The link contains places to visit, such as factories, schools and homes, and the various toxic chemicals that might be found there, eg, arsenic, asbestos, benzene and carbon monoxide. Household Products Database contains information on the health effects of common household products under your sink, in the garage, in the bathroom and on the laundry room shelf. Medline/PubMed provides access to more than 12 million references from 4600 biomedical journals, many of which have links to abstracts and in some cases, the full text of articles.
The Household Products Database addresses the products found around the house and provides information about what these products contain, about potential health effects, and about safety and handling. Information in the Household Products Database is taken from a variety of publicly available sources, including brand-specific labels and Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) prepared by manufacturers. You can browse and search by product name or the MSDS.
