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When to Sound an Alarm: Contaminants of Emerging Concern
Citation:
Guiseppi-Elie, A., A. Pollard, AND J. Zambrana. When to Sound an Alarm: Contaminants of Emerging Concern. International Society for Exposure Science (ISES) Annual Meeting, Lisbon, PORTUGAL, September 25 - 29, 2022.
Impact/Purpose:
Identifying and prioritizing Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) is a challenge for environmental and public health decision makers in communities, tribes, states, and federal governments not only in the US but around the globe. The US federal government has been working on ways to better plan for and deal with CECs, including identifying and planning to fill key reserach and data gaps. Additionally, the EPA is developing a framework for how to quickly determine when a larger and more coordinated effort is needed to deal with any particular CEC. This presentation will help ISES attendees from various fields, disciplines and organizations better under a rationale framework for beginning to address CECs and to think through what information is still needed to help environmental and public health managers worldwide.
Description:
Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs) are of increasing interest, especially in circumstances where little empirical or modeled data are available to understand factors that influence potential risk. CECs can cover a wide range of agents (e.g., chemical, biological, radiological) environmental media and chemistries. Local, regional, tribal, and federal governments are challenged with ways to systematically identify, monitor and manage any potential risks associated with CECs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is working to develop a technical framework to expedite the Agency’s response to potential CECs. Additionally, EPA is working with other U.S. federal partners under the auspices of National Defense Authorization Act of 2020 to coordinate on research and data gaps for addressing CECs, especially in water. This presentation will cover a technical framework, called Screening Risk of Emerging Contaminants (SIREN), that the EPA may use to help identify situations for wider agency mobilization on addressing a CEC. Factors to consider include potential hazards, exposure, persistence, bioaccumulation and cross-media impacts. The presentation will provide overview perspectives from coordinated federal discussions on important research gaps for CECs, what research is currently underway to evaluate them (e.g., on analytical methods, occurrence, source, transport, eco and health risks), and a basic structure for how to begin identifying and evaluating CECs. The views expressed in this abstract are those of the author[s] and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
