As a library user and environmental expert witness, I have many needs for information. These include:
1. Medical articles on topics such as diesel exhaust toxicity, particulate pollution and its relationship to asthma, and petroleum pollution of groundwater and its impact on human health.
2. Air monitoring information for our area and the trend through time.
3. Location and composition of hazardous waste dumps
4. Current Federal and State regulations and proposed changes to air and drinking water quality standards.
I find the information in a variety of locations.
1. For medical and technical articles, I use Medline on the Internet to find article abstracts. I obtain the articles from my State Regional library (interlibrary loan), or personally visit a medical school library library an hour from my home. I also use the internet to visit sites with specific information on a topic, the EPA site for air pollution regulations and proposed changes, California Air Resources Board (CARB) site for information in diesel exhaust toxicology.
2. Air monitoring data I obtain from my State Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) Air Quality Division. The data comes in hard copy, and is difficult to interpret. The data is very limited and does not address current air pollution issues in my opinion.
3. Hazardous waste dump data I also obtain from the ANR. I have used the web site with the maps. It is a frustrating exercise. The scale is a problem, and download times excessive. For where we are in graphics now on the internet, download speeds make this type of research very time consuming and not productive.
4. Regulations and proposed changes I get off the Internet. This is useful as many times the regulations and proposed changes exceed 1000 pages, and only a portion is related to my interest. I do find working with Adobe Acrobat difficult. Many times the type is small and difficult to read. Switching from page to page is slow. I would prefer to see documents in MS Word format that I can download to my harddrive for future reference.
I have also used the EPA Triage database for unpublished chemical toxicity studies done by the industry. This database has important chemical toxicity information. You get the studies from the EPA as Microfiche. The only microfiche reader is in a school library near my home and it has no means of making a copy. The documents are almost impossible to read. The toxicity information would be important to hearings on air and water pollution. Unfortunately, the manner in which the studies are archived at the EPA prevents access to the information. I would like to see thie resource at the EPA expanded, updated, and available as scanned documents that can be downloaded into a computer.
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