US EPA

This document is part of a continuing, long-term effort to develop Agency-wide ecological risk assessment guidelines for EPA. The goal of the guidelines is to improve the quality and consistency of the Agency's ecological risk assessments. These guidelines move beyond the Agency's report Framework for Ecological Risk Assessment (EPA/630/R-92/001) by expanding upon some concepts and modifying others to reflect Agency experiences in the several years since the Framework Report was published. While the basic ecological risk assessment structure of problem formulation, analysis and risk characterization is retained, the guidelines provide expanded discussions in areas such as interactions between the risk assessor and the risk manager at the beginning and end of the risk assessment, endpoint selection and conceptual model development, assessment involving physical and biological stressors, and risk characterization principles. The guidelines describe general options available to the risk assessor as well as points that should be considered in applying these options.

This approach provides the flexibility to permit EPA's programs and regional offices to develop more specific, detailed guidance suited to their own needs. Following peer review these draft proposed guidelines will be given additional Agency evaluation, then revised and published in the Federal Register for public comment. The guidelines will also be reviewed by EPA's Science Advisory Board.
Note: following a peer review workshop, this draft was revised and published as Proposed Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment and, following review by EPA's Science Advisory Board and the public, was published as final Guidelines for Ecological Risk Assessment in 1998.

Note: a complete electronic version of this document that preserves its original appearance (such as in a pdf file format) is not currently available.