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EPA Office of Research and Development Human Health Toxicity Assessment Products on PFAS
Citation:
Kraft, A. EPA Office of Research and Development Human Health Toxicity Assessment Products on PFAS. Remplex virtual summit 2021, Washington, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, November 08 - 12, 2021.
Impact/Purpose:
EPA human health toxicity assessments provide information on the human health hazards that may be posed by environmental chemicals, including the levels at which those hazards may occur. As part of EPA's effort to address the thousands of PFAS in the environment, ORD is developing toxicity assessments for individual PFAS. In addition, to complement the in vitro and short-term toxicity screening being conducted by ORD on thousands of PFAS (https://www.epa.gov/chemical-research/pfas-chemical-lists-and-tiered-testing-methods-descriptions), ORD is using systematic evidence mapping methods to collect and display the available toxicity information on these PFAS. This presentation will provide an overview of these EPA assessment efforts.
Description:
As part of EPA’s effort to address widespread environmental PFAS contamination and ubiquitous human exposure, EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) is developing various human health assessment products to characterize the evidence on the potential human health effects of these substances. Specifically, toxicity assessments for the individual PFAS, PFBS, PFBA, PFHxA, PFHxS, PFDA, and PFNA, are being developed to inform EPA risk management decisions. These assessments analyze the available research on these substances to draw conclusions on the potential for exposure to cause various health effects and to characterize the levels of exposure at which these effects are not expected to occur. In addition, as part of the broader effort to address the more than 8000 PFAS that have been identified, ORD is developing systematic evidence maps (SEMs) to complement the PFAS tiered toxicity testing being conducted by EPA’s Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure, CCTE (https://www.epa.gov/chemical-research/pfas-chemical-lists-and-tiered-testing-methods-descriptions). The SEMs use robust and reproducible methods to collect and display snapshots of the currently available data on PFAS. When used together with the screening-level toxicity data being generated by CCTE, these SEMs can help identify data gaps and sources of toxicity information to inform EPA decisions to group and prioritize the thousands of PFAS that exist.