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CHEMICAL HAZARD EVALUATION FOR MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES: A METHOD FOR RANKING AND SCORING CHEMICALS BY POTENTIAL HUMAN HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
Citation:
Davis, G. A., L. Kincaid, AND et al. CHEMICAL HAZARD EVALUATION FOR MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES: A METHOD FOR RANKING AND SCORING CHEMICALS BY POTENTIAL HUMAN HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-94/177 (NTIS 95-177366), 1994.
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Description:
Between 60,000 and 100,000 of the over than 8,000,000 chemicals listed by the Chemical Abstracts Services Registry are commercially produced and are potential environmental pollutants. Risk-based evaluation for these chemicals is often required to evaluate the potential impacts of chemical releases, for priority setting for regulatory action, for business decisions and to set priorities for pollution prevention. During the last decade, there have been vast improvements in the methods used to assess chemical toxicity and environmental fate and to interpret these data within a risk assessment framework. There is still a need, however, for generally accepted and widely used tools for setting priorities and providing consistency across environmental programs. Risk ranking and scoring systems can be used to focus attention and resources on the most significant hazards posed by industrial facilities, products or hazardous material sites. Risk-based chemical ranking and scoring combines an assessment of both the toxic effects of chemicals (human and/or environmental) and the potential exposure to those chemicals to provide a relative evaluation of risk. This method provides an approximate ranking of direct chemical hazards to human health and the environment based on their relative toxicity and the potential for exposure. The method does not include an evaluation of secondary global impacts such a ozone depletion and global warming. An algorithm has been developed to combine and weight evaluation criteria to. provide a working tool that ranks chemicals according to their potential human health and ecotoxic effects, and their potential environmental persistence and bioaccumulation. This report presents methodology for doing ranking at a first, or screening-level, tier. . „ • ' This report was submitted in partial fulfillment of Cooperative Agreement CR #816735-01-0 by the University of Tennessee's Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies, under the sponsorship of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This work covers a period from September 10, 1990 to September 9, 1994, and was completed as of August, 1994.