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Tools to Assess Community-Based Cumulative Risk and Exposures
Citation:
BARZYK, T. M. Tools to Assess Community-Based Cumulative Risk and Exposures. First, Chapter 0, 2010 McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science and Technology. McGraw-Hill Companies, New York, NY, , 387-390, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
Multiple agents and stressors can interact in a given community to adversely affect human and ecological conditions. A cumulative risk assessment (CRA) analyzes, characterizes, and potentially quantifies the effects from multiple stressors, which include chemical agents (for example, benzene) as well as biological (for example, vector-borne illness) physical (for example, housing characteristics), and psychological (for example, socioeconomic) ones. The distinguishing feature of a CRA is an analysis of combined effects and interactions. In risk assessment, the term “community-based" indicates a focus on a given population. A community may be defined by geophysical boundaries such as a watershed, by geophysical limits such as county or state borders, or by socioeconomic criteria within a defined geographic boundary. These assessments may also include community participation in project formulation and implementation, such as by providing test kits to residents to take measurements of environmental pollutants.