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DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL BIOACCUMULATION FACTORS
Citation:
Henry, T. R., D. Borum, L P. Burkhard, P. M. Cook, L. C. Sappington, AND E. L. Winchester. DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL BIOACCUMULATION FACTORS. Presented at EPA Science Forum, Washington, DC, May 5-7, 2003.
Description:
The 2000 Human Health Methodology incorporates a number of specific advancements made over the past two decades, one of which is in the assessment of chemical exposure to humans through the food chain pathway. For certain chemicals, the food chain exposure pathway is more important than ingestion of water. Such chemicals tend to be highly hydrophobic, partition in aquatic environments to sediments, and accumulate to high concentrations in fish and shellfish through the process of bioaccumulation. One step in assessing chemical exposure to humans through the food chain pathway involves estimating the amount of chemical that has bioaccumulated in fish and shellfish commonly consumed by populations in the United States. Previously the EPA approach to this estimation emphasized the use of the bioconcentration factor (BCF). The BCF reflects contamination exposure and accumulation by fish and shellfish only through the water column. However, over the past two decades scientific information generated by State and Federal governments, academia, and industry has shown that for highly bioaccumulative chemicals all routes of exposure to fish and shellfish are important in determining the chemical accumulation in an organism's body, which can be transmitted to humans when they consume fish and shellfish. EPA now emphasizes the use of a bioaccumu-
lation factor which accounts for chemical accumulation in fish and shellfish from all potential exposure routes and ultimately results in more accuracy and certainty in setting national 304(a) ambient water quality criteria.