CHEMICAL TOXICITY. HOW STUDENTS CAN FIND RELIABLE DATA IN TOXICOLOGICAL DATA BASES

Chemical toxicity is a very important topic, many of the changes we faced in the environment now, have a connection with chemical compounds, from the accumulation in the ecosystem by different mechanism, to wide pollution with mobile or fixed sources.

Students must be able to understand the problem and find the best solution.

Toxicity is a multifactorial problem. Many variables are involved, and in order to solve the problem; we must teach students how to find reliable data about the toxicity and environmental effect of many compounds.

Because chemical toxicity is a hot topic, a lot of information is available, but most of it is unreliable and have no scientific value.

The challenge we face as educators, is to teach students how to choose, between real information and folk information. Then we have to teach them the best scientific sources available to find the actual toxic effect of the compounds.

By making information about industrial management of toxic chemicals available to the public, is possible to create a strong incentive for companies to improve environmental performance information about the different disclosure programs. These types of information are also attainable by University and governmental or non-governmental organizations, and this information helps to achieve better environmental performance by setting standards and specifying how facilities must operate.

During our course of Chemical Informatics at the Faculty of Chemistry at UNAM, we teach student's different databases available free of charge, and by subscription in order to teach them the exact tools, to face any problem, and be sure they will have the right skills to solve a real-life problem of chemical toxicity when they are faced with them in their professional life.