Workshop Report 28

Demonstration of the web-based interspecies correlation estimation (Web-ICE) modelling application

Sandy Raimondo
Environmental Protection Agency, USA

The Web-based Interspecies Correlation Estimation (Web-ICE) modeling application is available
to the risk assessment community through a user-friendly internet platform (http://epa.gov/ceampubl/fchain/webice/). ICE models are log-linear least square regressions that predict acute toxicity (LC50/LD50) of a chemical to a species, genus, or family based on estimates of relative sensitivity between the taxon of interest and that of a surrogate species. Web-ICE v 3.2 includes over 1440 models for aquatic animal taxa, 100 models for algae, and 852 models for wildlife taxa. Web-ICE has modules that predict toxicity to one taxa of interest at a time while providing detailed information on model parameters. It also has species sensitivity distribution and endangered species modules that produce toxicity values to multiple species based on the number of surrogates entered. In the SSD module, a user can enter up to 20 surrogate species which are used to predict toxicity to all predicted taxa possible. The entered surrogate and predicted toxicity values are used to develop a log-logistic probability distribution and estimate a hazard level equivalent to either the 1st, 5th or 10th percentile of the distribution. Users can also enter multiple surrogate toxicity values into the endangered species module, which are used to calculate predicted species, genus, and family level sensitivity for selected endangered species. Both the SSD and endangered species modules provide exportable data files of predicted results. A demonstration of the Web-ICE will familiarize participants with the functionality of the application and provide examples of its use for single taxon predictions, SSD generation, and development of endangered species toxicity reports.