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REVISING EPA'S GUIDELINES FOR THE DERIVATIONS OF AQUATIC LIFE AMBIENT WATER QUALITY CRITERIA
Citation:
Henry, T R., H. E. Bell, C. Delos, R. Erickson, K. Kubena, K. Sappington, C E. Stephan, AND F L. Mayer Jr. REVISING EPA'S GUIDELINES FOR THE DERIVATIONS OF AQUATIC LIFE AMBIENT WATER QUALITY CRITERIA. Presented at SETAC World Congress and 25th Annual meeting, Portland, OR, November 14 - 18, 2004.
Impact/Purpose:
Conference abstract
Description:
Henry, T.R., H.E. Bell, C.G. Delos, R.J. Erickson, K.M. Kubena and F.L. Mayer. In press. Revising EPA's Guidelines for the Derivation of Aquatic Life Ambient Water Quality Criteria (Abstract). To be presented at the SETAC Fourth World Congress, 14-18 November 2004, Portland, OR. 1 p. (ERL,GB R1018).
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Water (OW) develops ambient water quality criteria (AWQC) to protect aquatic organisms from chemical pollutants pursuant to Section 304(a) of the Clean Water Act. Currently, AWQC for aquatic life protection are derived according to the 1985 Guidelines for Derivation of Ambient Water Quality Criteria for the Protection of Aquatic Life and Their Uses. To ensure that AWQC are derived from the best available science, EPA has formed an interagency Guidelines Steering Committee and several subcommittees to review the state-of-the-science and recommend new or improved approaches for deriving AWQC. These committees include scientists from EPA's Office of Water, Office of Research & Development, and Office of Pesticides Programs and from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and NOAA-Fisheries. The Steering Committee is using EPA's Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment as the organizing framework for revising the Guidelines. The Steering Committee is revising the Guidelines to address several key areas including: 1) the formulation of residue-based criteria that account for multiple exposure routes (e.g. dietary vs. water), bioaccumulation potential and tissue-residue based toxicity relationships to better assess toxicity of bioaccumulative chemicals; 2) the development of methods to better address additional ecological entities (e.g. plants and aquatic-dependent wildlife) and attributes (e.g., endpoints other than survival, growth and reproduction); 3) the use of toxicokinetic modeling to quantify organism responses to time-variable chemical exposures as a basis for improving current recommendations on the frequency and duration of criteria exceedences; 4) the application of population modeling for integrating effects on organism survival, growth, and reproduction and extrapolating these effects to the population level; 5) the development of approaches for characterizing risk to assemblages of aquatic species and quantifying the uncertainty associated with AWQC. The Steering Committee will provide OW with recommendations regarding these issues and identify where EPA must make science policy decisions. OW will review the Steering Committee's recommendations and incorporate science policy decision as it incorporates new approaches and methods into new or revised AWQC on an on-going basis. This abstract does not necessarily reflect EPA policy.