EPA convened a one-day meeting on February 20, 2002 to gather stakeholder input for an Action Plan for the development of a Metals Assessment Framework. The meeting was held at the Holiday Inn Washington Capitol Hotel in Washington, D.C. Approximately 40 stakeholders representing industry and regulatory agencies attended the meeting. Five stakeholders presented comments. The stakeholders agreed that the Metals Assessment Framework should be based on sound science, and that it should provide a basis for appropriately identifying the risks of metals to human health and the environment. The Framework should support EPA's principles and should be structured to mesh with similar EPA and international programs. The stakeholders believed that the method of determining the hazard of a metal should be modified from the Persistence, Bioaccumulation, and Toxicity (PBT) approach developed for evaluating organics. Suggested alternative methods for evaluating metals toxicity included redefining persistence in metals to consider bioavailability, consideration of the nonintrinsic bioaccumulation property of metals, and consideration of speciation and bioavailability.