Aggregate Risk Assessment of Pesticides at the U.S. EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. D. J. Miller, US EPA, Washington DC
As a result of the passage of the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the U.S. EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs is now required to "aggregate" (or combine) pesticide risks across exposure pathways (including drinking water exposures and household and lawn and garden uses) as well as to "cumulate" risks among pesticides (and other chemicals) with similar mechanisms of toxicity. In addition, the Act requires that an up to additional 10-fold uncertainty factor be applied if inadequate data are available concerning extra sensitivity of children or other sensitive subpopulations to pesticides. As a result, the Office of Pesticide Programs is required to refine its prior methods for determining risks of pesticides to human health. A draft document entitled " Guidance for Submission of Probabilistic Exposure Assessments to the Office of Pesticide Programs’ Health Effects Division " has been published (and is available on EPA’s web site) which discusses some of the policies which have been established. This talk will focus on Agency approaches to performing aggregate risk assessments and will discuss the probabilistic techniques (including Monte-Carlo) currently in use in the Pesticide Programs Office.
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