Exposure levels assessment

Elazard assessment and monitoring data show low exposure levels... 

Exposure assessment to reveal the exposure of different groups of people, and to compare their exposure levels to the doses that cause harmful effects in humans as shown in epidemiological studies, or to doses that cause toxic effects in experimental animals... 

Risk assessment, a synthesis of the preceding three steps, which aims to assess both qualitatively and quantitatively the risks induced by a chemical at a given or at different exposure levels. 

It is an accepted practice when assessing the environmental effects of pollution on man and his place of abode to use a divisor of 40 (some agencies may divide by 30) against the long-term exposure level in the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA). Much lower exposure limits are necessary due to the much longer term of exposure in the domestic situation. The section of the population most likely to spend long periods of time in the home are those most susceptible to the detrimental effects of pollutants, i.e. the young, the elderly or the infirm. For short-term exposure the known data can be used directly from the list or from animal-exposure data. 

Often, absorption occurs by multiple routes in humans. Dean et al. (1984) reported deaths and toxic effects as well as lowered blood cholinesterase levels and excretion of urinary 4-nitrophenol in several children who were exposed by inhalation, oral, and possibly dermal routes after the spraying of methyl parathion in a house. In the same incident (Dean et al. 1984), absorption was indicated in adults who also excreted 4-nitrophenol in the urine, though at lower levels than some of the children, and in the absence of other evidence of methyl parathion exposure. In this study, the potential for age-related differences in absorption rates could not be assessed because exposure levels were not known and the children may have been more highly exposed than the adults. Health effects from multiple routes are discussed in detail in Section 3.2. 

Exposure Levels in Humans. This information is necessary for assessing the need to conduct health studies on these populations. Trichloroethylene has been detected in human body fluids such as blood (Brugnone et al. 1994 Skender et al. 1994) and breast milk (Pellizzari et al. 1982). Most of the monitoring data have come from occupational studies of specific worker populations exposed to trichloroethylene. More information on exposure levels for populations living in the vicinity of hazardous waste sites is needed for estimating human exposure. 

Exposure Levels in Environmental Media. Reliable monitoring data for the levels of americium in contaminated media at hazardous waste sites are needed so that the information obtained on levels of americium in the environment can be used in combination with the known body burden of americium to assess the potential risk of adverse health effects in populations living in the vicinity of hazardous waste sites. 

Mineral Oil Hydraulic Fluids and Polyalphaolefin Hydraulic Fluids. Very limited information is available concerning levels of these hydraulic fluids in environmental media. The only available study described concentrations at a spill site (Abdul et al. 1990). No other reports of mineral oil hydraulic fluid exposure levels in environmental media were found in the available literature. At NPL sites, it becomes difficult to decide which original products are associated with documentation of specific site contaminants. General research dealing with assessment techniques relevant to complex petroleum hydrocarbon mixtures would be helpful in deciding how to approach the environmental media exposure issues. 

Information on exposure levels is fundamental for the assessment and management of health risks related to occupational and environmental exposure to pesticides. Biological monitoring is a primary tool for exposure evaluation,... 

Collectively, the data from Table 7 and Figures 1 through 3 lead to the conclusion that concurrent biomonitoring and passive dosimetry techniques can be achieved and are not divergent worker exposure assessment methods. The correlation between exposure levels measured by these methods is quite good. 

Because the significance of exposure has only been considered over the past few years, there is not as wide a selection of exposure models available as that for fate models. The latter have been applied for several decades to the calculation of ambient exposure levels compared with some standard values. Papers illustrative of human exposure assessments in this symposium include one on airborne pollutant exposure assessments by Anderson (2), a generic approach to estimating exposure in risk studies by Fiksel (5), and a derivation of pollutant limit values in soil or water based on acceptable doses to humans by Rosenblatt, Small and Kainz (6). 

Aquatic safety factors ranged from 5.5 X 107 for rainbow trout in ponds to 9.3 X 108 for daphnia in lakes. These data emphasize that exposure levels of CGA-72662 are low and must be taken into account for a risk assessment. Although the persistence of CGA-72662 in eutrophic lakes is relatively long, the exposure is extremely low and of no environmental consequence. Overall, use of SWRRB runoff and EXAMS models show CGA-72662 to be very safe in aquatic habitats when used on vegetables in Florida muck soil. 

For a realistic risk assessment, the environmental fate, exposure levels and toxicity of the compound must be considered in an integrated fashion. 

The output of an exposure and risk assessment will usually describe the levels of exposure and quantity the population exposed for both humans and other biota, and will estimate the associated probabilities of the incidence of adverse health effects. Population exposure or risk, obtained by multiplying the individual (per capita) exposure or risk by the numbers exposed at each level of exposure, may also be a useful measure of impact. Various analyses can be performed on the results, for example, comparison of exposures in a particular geographic area against national average exposure levels. Likewise, for the same pollutant, environmental risks due to a particular industry might be compared against risks associated with occupational or household activities. In addition, the health risk of different substances could be compared for priority setting. 

The following example is based on a risk assessment of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) performed by Arthur D. Little. The experimental dose-response data upon which the extrapolation is based are presented in Table II. DEHP was shown to produce a statistically significant increase in hepatocellular carcinoma when added to the diet of laboratory mice (14). Equivalent human doses were calculated using the methods described earlier, and the response was then extrapolated downward using each of the three models selected. The results of this extrapolation are shown in Table III for a range of human exposure levels from ten micrograms to one hundred milligrams per day. The risk is expressed as the number of excess lifetime cancers expected per million exposed population. 

---