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Implementing a Workflow for Exposure Screening of Drinking Water Contaminants of Concern
Citation:
Isaacs, K. Implementing a Workflow for Exposure Screening of Drinking Water Contaminants of Concern. ORD Chemical Safety for Sustainability Board of Scientific Counselors Meeting, Virtual, NC, February 02 - 05, 2021. https://doi.org/10.23645/epacomptox.13826543
Impact/Purpose:
Presentation to the CSS BOSC meeting February 2021 on the collaboration between the Minnesota Department of Health and CCTE on exposure screening chemicals of emerging concern in drinking water.
Description:
The number of chemicals present in the human environment far exceeds the capacity of government bodies to fully characterize their risk. Therefore, scientifically sound processes are needed for screening chemicals and prioritizing them for further assessment. The Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), under its Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CEC) initiative, uses a standardized process to screen potential drinking water contaminants based on exposure potential. Recently, MDH partnered with the U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) to accelerate this process via development of an automated workflow to collect and report relevant exposure data, including New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for exposure from ORD’s ExpoCast project and other relevant chemical data included in ORD’s CompTox Chemicals Dashboard. The workflow incorporated information from 23 broad data sources, covering chemical identity and use, property, emission and disposal, environmental occurrence, and human exposure domains. The workflow also incorporated data sources and criteria specific to Minnesota and MDH’s regulatory authority. The collected data were used to score chemical candidates using quantitative algorithms previously developed by MDH. The new workflow was tested via application to 14 chemicals currently undergoing screening by MDH and 10 data-rich chemicals that were previously manually evaluated. This proof-of-concept study confirmed agreement between the automated and manual results for most of the data domains; however, additional environmental monitoring data sources that would improve concurrence were identified. This workflow will allow MDH health scientists to speed up screening evaluations and expand the number of chemicals assessed, freeing resources to complete the more complex aspects of exposure assessment. The automated workflow will be applied in the future to screen large libraries of chemicals relevant to MDH for identification of chemical candidates for further hazard and risk assessment.
URLs/Downloads:
DOI: Implementing a Workflow for Exposure Screening of Drinking Water Contaminants of Concern
ISAACS_CSS_BOSC_MN_WORKFLOW_012121.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 2609.11 KB, about PDF)