US EPA

The Draft Strategy for Research on Environmental Risks to Children describes the research directions that EPA's Office of Research and Development (ORD) will follow over the next five years in its Children's Health Program. The primary objective of the Program is to conduct research to reduce uncertainties in EPA risk assessments for children, leading to effective measures to prevent/reduce risk. The Strategy presents a set of scientific questions on children's susceptibility and exposure to environmental contaminants and outlines approaches to addressing these questions that will lead to improved EPA risk assessments for children.

The Strategy describes the current ORD research program on children's health and its relation to research in other federal agencies, descriptions of which were obtained from publically-available sources. It outlines research program directions aimed at development of data to reduce uncertainties in risk assessment, risk assessment methods and models, new approaches to data collection, and risk prevention/reduction methods. The Strategy encompasses research performed by EPA intramural scientists and research supported through ORD's Science to Achieve Results (STAR) extramural grants program and cooperative agreements between ORD laboratories and other research institutions.

The Strategy has been reviewed internally in ORD. An External Peer Review is scheduled for November 9 and 10, 1999, in Washington DC.

THIS DOCUMENT IS AN EXTERNAL REVIEW DRAFT for review purposes only and should not at this stage be construed to represent the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency policy. It is being circulated for comment on its technical accuracy and policy implications. The document will be reviewed by a formal independent external review panel and revised based upon the panel's comments before it is finalized.