Environmental issues risk assessment

Fig. 1 Integrated environmental health risk assessment scheme (based on [2]) the boxes within the red line are the issues discussed in this chapter...

The characterisation of health hazards of food contaminants, the assessment of the occurrence of undesirable compounds in food and the estimation of the dietary intake are key issues in the risk assessment. In 2000, the European Commission published a White Paper on Food Safety, which underlined the importance of ensuring the highest possible standards of food safety and proposed a new approach to achieve them. Recently, PFCs have gained increased scientific and socioeconomic interest as emerging environmental contaminants due to the unique combination of persistence, toxicity and environmental prevalence. Risk assessment of the dietary exposure to PFCs, however, is hampered by the lack of sufficient data about the occurrence of these contaminants in food. 

White, R. H., Cote, I., Zeise, L., Fox, M., Dominici, F, Burke, T. A., White, P. D., Hattis, D. B., and Samet, J. M. (2009). State-of-the-Science Workshop Report Issues and approaches in low-dose-response extrapolation for environmental health risk assessment. Environ Health Perspect 117(2), 283-287. 

In environmental risk assessment, the objective is to establish the likelihood of a chemical (or chemicals) expressing toxicity in the natural environment. Assessment is based on a comparison of ecotoxicity data from laboratory tests with estimated or measured exposure in the field. The question of effects at the level of population that may be the consequence of such toxicity is not addressed. This issue will now be discussed. 

Another issue is the development and refinement of the testing protocols used in mesocosms. Mesocosms could have a more important role in environmental risk assessment if the data coming from them could be better interpreted. The use of biomarker assays to establish toxic effects and, where necessary, relate them to effects produced by chemicals in the field, might be a way forward. The issues raised in this section will be returned to in Chapter 17, after consideration of the individual examples given in Part 2. 

The definitions of method detection and quantification limits should be reliable and applicable to a variety of extraction procedures and analytical methods. The issue is of particular importance to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and also pesticide regulatory and health agencies around the world in risk assessment. The critical question central to risk assessment is assessing the risk posed to a human being from the consumption of foods treated with pesticides, when the amount of the residue present in the food product is reported nondetect (ND) or no detectable residues . 

This last outcome was the starting point for the work to be done during the second part of the project. At this point, the different work packages focused on their topics, that is, in environmental fate, toxicology, risk assessment, life cycle assessment, and socioeconomic issues. The objective was to apply the different methodologies related to these fields of knowledge to the selected substances in order to assess the potential risk that they can pose to the human health and the environment. 

Though it is impossible to anticipate all the directions in which environmental risk assessment will expand during the forthcoming years, below are presented some hot issues that nowadays are already attracting considerable scientific research. 

EPA released the first case study of cumulative risks from 24 OPs in food for scientific review in mid-2000. Public comments were solicited and several scientific panel (SAP) meetings were held on various aspects of EPA s quantitative methods. In December 2001 a preliminary OP-CRA (cumulative risk assessment) was released, this time encompassing 30 OPs, additional foods, more residue data and all major routes of exposure. Public comments were solicited again and another series of SAP meetings were held. The revised final OP-CRA was issued in June 2002 after more than 20 SAP meetings and four rounds of public comment (US Environmental Protection Agency, 2002). It is the most sophisticated and data-rich pesticide risk assessment ever carried out. 

The relationship between environment and security is indirect and multicasual. Therefore it is difficult to assess the risk to security caused by environmental change. Taking into consideration the principle of sustainable development where the environmental, economic and social issues are interdependent and cannot be pursued separately, the integrated risk assessment is particularly useful. 

The sustainable management of sediments, in addition to water, soil and sludge environmental matrices, in relation to surfactant regulations, is also an important and relevant issue. The US EPA has recently shown concern regarding the levels of surfactants in sediments and has thus released a Draft Contaminated Sediment Science Plan. In this draft, recommendations for the development of analytical methods and evaluations of the toxicity and risk assessment of Emerging endocrine disrupters like APEOs and their metabolites in sediment samples are outlined. 

One study that has tackled this issue, however, was recently published by de Souza et al. [104], who set up an environmental risk assessment of the 21 intravenous antibiotics most used in an intensive care unit of a hospital in Curitiba (Brazil). They evaluated the RQ, based on PEC, both in the raw effluent and after a dedicated conventional biological treatment. They found that, in the raw effluent from the ward, the environmental risk was high for 15 compounds, medium for 4 and low for 2 similarly, the treated effluent was labelled as high risk in terms of 14 compounds, medium for 5 and low for 2. 

Abstract Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) represent a group of emerging environmental contaminants. Albeit in trace amounts, they are of great concern since given their continuous introduction into the environment, their impact on ecosystems and human health is of great importance. As a result, the environmental risk assessment (ERA) of medicinal products has to be evaluated and appropriate legislation has been issued in the European Union (EU). 

The protection of ground and surface water has major environmental priority because any contamination may cause a risk for its use in human and animal nutrition and may disturb aquatic biocoenosis. The OECD-indicator list (OECD 1997) subsummarises state and risk assessment approaches under this issue. We will confine our efforts to indicators that are appropriate to evaluate the impact of different farm management practices. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US-EPA) published the white paper titled Potential Implications of Genomics for Regulatory and Risk Assessment Applications at EPA in 2004 (US-EPA 2004). This paper was issued to present exemplary applications and resultant implications of the use of genomics technologies in US-EPA practice. 

The series of Risk Assessment Guidelines includes a guideline for neurotoxicity risk assessment (US-EPA 1998). This Guideline sets forth principles and procedures to guide US-EPA scientists in evaluating environmental contaminants that may pose neurotoxic risks, and inform US-EPA decision-makers and the public about these procedures. The Guideline includes a discussion of general dehnitions and issues, an overview of test methods, and the interpretation of data within the U.S. framework for risk assessment. 

Risk analysis and risk management play an important role in public policy. These debates range from the development of environmental impact statements for the location of buildings to debates on household lead abatement and what chemicals can be allowed in the food supply. Quality of life issues such as asthma and/or loss of mental function are now recognized as important components of risk assessment. 

Risk assessment is a multi-step process to relate the association of exposure to a chemical or physical agent with adverse outcome. Initially the focus was human health but now it has broadened to include wider environmental and ecological concerns. Risk management is a more overtly political process directed at determining an action based on relevant public and environmental health goals, cost, societal issues, and other related or even unrelated issues. An important part of risk management is balancing the risks, costs, and benefits - never an easy task. 

Smith EP, Shugart HH. 1994. Uncertainty in ecological risk assessment. In Ecological risk assessment issue papers. Washington (DC) Risk Assessment Forum, US Environmental Protection Agency. USEPA 630/R/94/009. 

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