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Society For Risk Analysis Annual Meeting 2008
Risk Analysis: the Science and the Art
Session Schedule & Abstracts
* Disclaimer: All presentations represent the views of the authors, and not the organizations that support their research. Please apply the standard disclaimer that any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations in abstracts, posters, and presentations at the meeting are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any other organization or agency. Meeting attendees and authors should be aware that this disclaimer is intended to apply to all abstracts contained in this document. Authors who wish to emphasize this disclaimer should do so in their presentation or poster. In an effort to make the abstracts as concise as possible and easy for meeting participants to read, the abstracts have been formatted such that they exclude references to papers, affiliations, and/or funding sources. Authors who wish to provide attendees with this information should do so in their presentation or poster.
Common abbreviations
T3-C |
| Chair(s): Linda Teuschler, Margaret MacDonell |
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T3-C.1 14:00 Cumulative Risk Assessment: Integrating Established Approaches with New Concepts to Improve Population Health Protection. Preuss PW*, Teuschler LK, MacDonell MM; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency preuss.peter@epa.gov Abstract: Cumulative risk assessment (CRA) is an increasingly valuable discipline for informing community and environmental health programs. CRAs combine many factors, including population characteristics and the nature of exposures and responses to multiple chemicals and other stressors. CRA initiating factors include: multiple pollution sources, from factories to farmlands; environmental quality metrics such as air pollution levels; exposure metrics, including biomonitoring data; and effect metrics such as low birth weights, high cancer rates; and effects on ecosystem function and services (e.g., declining fish populations). U.S. EPA’s CRA framework and recent issue papers emphasize population-based analyses of effects from combined exposures to multiple chemical, biological or physical stressors and consider population vulnerabilities (i.e., susceptibility/sensitivity and differential exposure, preparedness and ability to recover). Existing tools are being adapted and new tools developed to integrate data on multiple chemicals and stressors across populations over spatial and temporal scales. A new joint Agency resource document outlines concepts, methods, and data sources for cumulative health risk assessments, to support applications within the larger “unregulated” context of lifestyle, behavioral, nutritional, social and economic factors. It is suggested that epidemiological methods, public health data and surveillance systems be examined to evaluate effects of key concern for a given community. No one U.S. Agency is responsible for population health across all settings and stressors, e.g., industrial pollution, food contamination, pharmaceuticals, invasive species and noise. Thus, cross-Agency/cross-community and private industry collaborations are needed to integrate risk information for effective health protection programs within the U.S. The presentation highlights recent cumulative risk initiatives, including at the state, national, and international levels. |
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T3-C.2 14:20 Cumulative risk assessment: Considerations for quantifying the risk of exposure to multiple chemicals and stressors. . Wright JM*, Hertzberg R, Rice G, Teuschler LK, Lipscomb J, Lambert J, MacDonell M; US Environmental Protection Agency Wright.Michael@epa.gov Abstract: Given ubiquitous exposures to multi-source environmental contaminants, cumulative risk assessment (CRA) is an increasingly important tool to quantify risk. CRA includes an evaluation of health risks for multiple health endpoints from multi-route exposures to multiple chemicals and other stressors with a population focus and emphasis on stakeholder involvement. Important considerations for conducting CRAs include the following: environmental transformations of mixture component chemicals, assessment of joint toxic action, the potential integration of epidemiological data including biomonitoring data into CRAs, the use of strategies for grouping chemicals by exposure or toxicity, as well as development of methodological approaches for conducting risk characterizations. Other key components include the identification of initiating factors for a CRA and quantification of the potential impact of various vulnerability factors. Identifying populations susceptible to various exposures and health conditions, including exposure modifying behaviors (e.g., time activity patterns), diet and other lifestyle behaviors, are critical as they can directly impact exposure levels. The importance of different vulnerability factors, such as genetic variability, health and nutritional status, and access to health care, should be considered as they can impact an individual’s susceptibility to disease and their ability to recover. Since socio-demographic factors, such as socio-economic status and group-level characteristics (e.g., community/neighborhood factors such as poverty or social deprivation), can modify the effects of cumulative exposures (i.e., statistical interaction/effect measure modification), these critical stressors need to be examined when quantifying risk to multiple environmental pollutants. These considerations should allow for better quantification of risk due to multi-route exposures to multiple chemicals and non-chemical stressors in CRAs. |
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T3-C.3 14:40 Exposure-based groupings to guide cumulative risk analyses. MacDonell MM*, Rice GE, Picel KC, Hildebrand RD, Butler JP, Chang YS, Hertzberg RC, Haroun LA, Wright JM; Argonne National Laboratory (1,3,5,6), US EPA (2,9), US DOE (4), Emory University (7), Environ (8) macdonell@anl.gov Abstract: Cumulative assessments are often exposure-centric, reflecting the community focus of environmental health protection programs. Stressor levels are a common initiator, typically for chemicals but also for other agents. Joint exposure considers coexistence in time and space, so stressors can be grouped by: source and release type; properties that affect fate, including interactions; and receptor location and timing. Many contaminants were released decades ago, and assessments often extend over a lifetime to assess chronic exposures and effects. Thus, the period of interest can be 100 years or more, and the spatial scale can extend a similar number of miles. Various models assess fate and transport, but few incorporate transformation rates and products. Cumulative assessments consider the impact of natural processes on concentrations and compositions of mixed stressors, as illustrated by pesticide weathering. Stressors can be grouped by inherent physical-chemical properties then regrouped to account for setting-specific characteristics to produce joint fate-partitioning sets over time. These estimates are linked with groupings of activity patterns and other receptor characteristics to identify key space-time combinations. When the assessment objective involves identifying main contributors to environmental levels so those sources can be targeted for control measures, environmental forensics may be used. These source attributions can involve groups linking air pollutants to a chemical mass balance dispersion model, or comparing measured soil or groundwater levels with indicators (e.g., cesium-137 profile or uranium isotopic ratio). The presentation will illustrate exposure-based grouping approaches for assessing cumulative risks of various stressors. Examples will consider use of data from emission and release inventories, land use maps and remote sensing; generating process and seasonal impacts; occupational context; surrogates; and hindcasting to inform forecasting. |
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T3-C.4 Resource toolbox for cumulative risk assessment . Butler JP*, MacDonell MM, Collie SL, Haroun LA, Hildebrand RD, Hertzberg RC, Finster ME; Argonne National Laboratory (1,2,7), Synergy Toxicology (3) Environ (4), US DOE (5), Emory University (6) butler@anl.gov Abstract: Federal, State, and other organizations have developed a variety of approaches and tools for assessing health risks, each with its own purpose, strengths and limitations. Although many tools consider multiple contaminants, exposures, and effects, relatively few explicitly describe a cumulative risk context, such as by addressing specific groupings or joint toxicity, or being population-focused. Nevertheless, collectively these materials represent a valuable resource for cumulative risk analyses. Until recently, no systematic effort had been conducted to assemble a practical toolbox for risk assessors and others interested in evaluating cumulative risks. Instead, people have had to search across program offices and other organizational websites to identify resources that could be relevant. To address this integration need and facilitate community-based involvement, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) have jointly developed such a toolbox. This new cumulative risk toolbox contains 70 resources organized into four areas: (1) planning, scoping, and problem formulation, including stakeholder involvement; (2) contaminant fate/transport and exposure; (3) toxicity assessment; and (4) risk and uncertainty characterization, and presentation of results. In text and summary tables the toolbox identifies each resource and where it can be found, its purpose and scope, and context for cumulative risk applications. The materials range from conceptual model builders and approaches for involving local schools and communities, to geographic information system (GIS)-based transport models, indicator-based screening tools, toxicity databases, and risk calculation software. The presentation will illustrate how selected tools can be integrated to address different types of cumulative risk questions. The toolbox will be available on the EPA Web site, to enhance access to these combined resources and strengthen cumulative risk applications. |
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