Epa scientists

Suppose EPA scientists are investigating lead contamination of soil near an abandoned mining and smelting operation. How should the soil be sampled so that the analytical results obtained on the individual samples provide a reliable indication of the range and distribution of contamination of the entire site ... 

US-EPA has formed the Risk Assessment Forum, a standing committee of senior US-EPA scientists, to promote US-EPA consensus on difficult and controversial risk assessment issues and to ensure that this consensus is incorporated into appropriate US-EPA risk assessment guidance. To fulhil this purpose, the Forum assembles US-EPA risk assessment experts in a formal process to study and report on issues from a US-EPA scientific perspective. Major Fomm guidance documents are developed in accordance with the US-EPA s regulatory and policy development process and become US-EPA pohcy upon approval by the Administrator or the Deputy Administrator. The Risk Assessment Forum products include risk assessment guidelines, technical panel reports on special risk assessment issues, and peer consultation and peer review workshops addressing controversial risk assessment topics. 

US-EPA s Risk Assessment Guidehnes set forth recommended principles and procedures to guide US-EPA scientists in assessing the risks from chemicals or other agents in the environment. They also inform US-EPA decision-makers and the public about these procedures. 

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. 

IRIS is a toxicology data file that contains data in support of human health risk assessment. It is compiled by the US EPA and contains over 500 chemical records. IRIS data, focusing on hazard identification and dose-response assessment, are reviewed by work groups of EPA scientists and represents EPA consensus. Among the key data provided in IRIS are EPA carcinogen classifications, unit risks, slope factors, oral reference doses, and inhalation reference concentrations. 

Precaution and Environmental Science. When the precautionary principle is discussed in its relationship to science, it is often portrayed as an antiscience or a risk-management principle that is only used after undergoing conventional scientific processes. As discussed earlier, in practice the limitations of science to characterize complex risks show that precaution is not at odds (Kriebel et al., 2001). Further, precaution is not just about additional safety factors or changing risk assessment default assumptions. Research by U.S. EPA scientists has demonstrated that many of the EPA s Reference Doses - or conservative safe exposures - may correspond to risks of greater than 1 in 1000, meaning that safety factors alone may not protect health (Castorina and Woodruff, 2003). 

This report was prepared by members of the EPA technical panel listed below, with assistance from the staff of EPA s Risk Assessment Forum. Technical review was provided by numerous individuals, including EPA scientists and participants in the May 1991 peer review workshop. Editorial assistance was provided by R.O.W. Sciences, Inc. 

Calculating doses for environmental chemicals is not much more complex. Suppose a local ground water supply has become contaminated with the widely used degreasing solvent, trichloroethylene (TCE). EPA scientists have measured the extent of TCE contamination and found that the water contains 2 micrograms of TCE in each liter of water (how they know this will be discussed a little later). People living above the water have sunk wells, and adults are drinking two liters of the water each day and their children are consuming one liter. 

Dr. J. Bruckner and his colleagues at the University of Georgia are collaborating with EPA scientists to develop more accurate PBPK models for prediction of time integrals of target organ exposure to... 

The purpose of these guidehnes was to outline a procedure that EPA scientists could use to assess the cancer risk associated with exposure to chemicals in the environment. This document was also used to inform the public about the process of cancer risk assessment. 

Dissemination of applied INA deletion mutants. In its assessment, EPA scientists assumed that, given the nature of the proposed experiments and the ecological characteristics of epiphytic bacteria such as those to be applied, the INA bacteria could not be contained within the boundaries of the test plot. However, field studies conducted with the INA+ parental strains suggested that dispersal of the applied bacteria from the test site would probably be minimal. 

Based on these findings, EPA scientists were then able to conclude that the proposed small scale applications of INA-bacteria would pose no foreseeable risks to humans or the... 

As an EPA scientist studying catalytic converters and urban smog, you want to find for the following reaction ... 

Computer modeling is widely used in EPA s TSCA Sustainable Futures Program. EPA scientists have developed several computer programs to evaluate potential risks associated with new chemicals under TSCA Section 5 PMN review for which adequate data are not provided in the submission. These programs can estimate hazard and exposure... 

The paucity of human, animal, and aquatic toxicity data for most PMN substances has led [U.S. EPA] scientists to use several different approaches for hazard identification. These approaches include consideration of the likelihood of absorption from the lung, gastrointestinal tract, and skin consideration of the expected products of metabolism and their toxicity structure-activity relationships (SARs) and consideration of the presence of structural groups or substituents that are known to bestow toxicity. 

Caught between the activists criticism and an antiregulation administration, a small group of epa scientists, many with backgroimds in environmental, political and labor activism, took the unusual and impressive step of organizing a union of toxicologists, chemists, biologists, attorneys and other environmental professionals in the name of scientific ethics. ... 

Through the union, epa scientists fashioned themselves as champions of objectivity and as spokespersons for nature. The particular version of objectivity they upheld was the common garden variety in modern Western science, what Donna Haraway has called the view... 

As a union concerned with workplace conditions. Local 2030 soon became focused on not just the political but also the environmental conditions in the agency s headquarters. The local turned its attention to Waterside Mall just at the moment when there was a nationwide surge of distress over the unexpected presence of chemical exposures inside office buildings. EPA scientists, whose very livelihoods cormected the politics of environmental exposure and suspended perceptions, were not immune to this distress or to the way privilege shaped its articulation. 

Local 2050 became consumed with the issue of indoor air quality. Members channeled their challenge of corrupted science into proving the existence of harmful chemical exposures in their own workplace. Union leaders fashioned themselves as defenders of the victims of exposure among their own. With their expert technical skills, epa scientists had a unique insider opportunity to demonstrate how the detection of harmful exposures was purposefully avoided or, in other words, how suspensions of perception had been strategically generated at the agency. 

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