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Toxicant & Disease Database

Toxicant and Disease Database

The CHE Toxicant and Disease Database is a searchable database that summarizes links between chemical contaminants and approximately 180 human diseases or conditions. Diseases and or toxicants can be viewed by utilizing the search options below. In 2025, we have also added links to information available in the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD). See a full description of the database and our methodology.

See also our compilation of other Databases and Resources.

For questions or comments about the database, please contact us through our Contact form.

Select one of the following

Select a Disease Category

Select a Disease

Select a Toxicant

Search by CAS number

Search by disease keyword

Search by name

COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)

Causes Grouped by strength of evidence

Strong Evidence cement dust coal dust cotton dust particulate air pollution (soot) tobacco smoke (active smoking) vanadium wood dust	Good Evidence antimony cadmium chromium grain dust irritant gases metal fumes ozone silica sodium hydroxide tobacco smoke (secondhand)	Limited Evidence ammonia arsenic chlorine manganese nickel carbonyl nitrogen dioxide sulfur dioxide

Notes

Cement dust, chlorine, coal dust, grain dust, cotton/hemp/flax dust, and sulfur dioxide have all been shown to act additively or multiplicatively with tobacco smoke to cause disease.

ADDITIONAL DATA: The toxicant–disease relationships shown above were last updated in 2011. The relationships shown here are still valid, but additional research has been conducted since that time. Additional research on this disease can be found at this link:

COMPARATIVE TOXICOGENOMICS DATABASE: CURATED RESULTS
Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive

This link will direct your search to an external database, the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD). This database is different from, and complementary to, our database.

More information about sources and methods

CHE’s Toxicant and Disease Database evaluates existing evidence and categorizes that evidence based on its strength. It is constructed using expert judgment and epidemiological causal inference.
The CTD, in contrast, is a continually updated resource that presents information on a broad range of literature on chemical-disease relationships. It also provides data on genes, biological processes, and phenotypes related to chemicals and diseases. It does not categorize information based on strength of evidence, include an expert judgment process, or draw causal conclusions about toxicant-disease relationships.
The link we have provided on this page goes directly to CTD's curated results, which are a subset of the information available through CTD. Curated results in CTD are those for which studies are available on the toxicant-disease relationship.