Accountability - Assessing Risk Management Decisions

Quick Finder

The Issue | Science Objectives | Research Highlights | Impact and Outcome

The Issue

To ensure that pollution control programs produce measurable benefits in human health, it is important to assess the effectiveness of EPA's tools, approaches, and indicators used to evaluate the outcomes of risk management decisions.

Under the Environmental Indicators Initiative, the Agency has begun a process to better assess the "state of the environment" that may result from its policies and actions to improve environmental quality. The current label applied to this overall effort is accountability (i.e., the Agency's desire to be more accountable to the public in demonstrating true environmental progress).

Research is needed to better understand the impact of past Agency decisions and to better estimate the impact of future decisions. Assessments of existing tools and development and validation of new ones will advance EPA's ability to evaluate outcomes such as exposure reduction and health benefits that result from its regulatory decisions and actions.

Science Objectives

The objectives of accountability research are to develop and validate environmental public health tools, approaches, and indicators that can be used to reflect more closely the actual impact of environmental decision making on public health and to help clarify the health benefits and financial costs associated with further incremental environmental improvements.

Research Goals:

Provide a matrix of local health data to convey the health status of vulnerable populations
Develop questionnaire data on activity patterns for vulnerable populations
Develop geographic information system maps of air quality and modeled exposures for air toxics, ozone, and particulate matter in New Haven, CT
Apply and evaluate industrial source complex modeling approaches
Determine exposure predictors of health outcomes for vulnerable populations
Provide case studies demonstrating how measurements, models, and health effects analysis tools might be used in other communities and at the national level
Link surrogate monitoring information to public health outcomes
Provide tools for risk assessment methodologies in estimating public health impacts of drinking water regulations
Aid the Agency in refining assumptions used to estimate waterborne disease
Improve estimates of public health effects associated with recreational water criteria
Contribute to the health chapter of the Report on the Environment

Research Highlights

Research supported by a grant will examine the feasibility of using existing environmental (ambient) or biological databases for linking environmental conditions with health outcomes.
Demonstration projects are being planned or conducted to support the development of a national strategy to evaluate the effectiveness of risk management decisions. One project will focus on assessing the cumulative impact of a suite of air pollution reduction programs on environmental public health indicators for children and older populations in New Haven, CT. This research will provide guidance about which models are most useful in assessing public health impacts in response to provisions of the Clear Air Act. A second project will focus on evaluating the potential use of direct health measures for assessing the impact of drinking water regulations targeting microbial pathogens. This research will assess the health impact of drinking water regulations and focus on health effects measurements in communities where water treatment changes have been made to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act to minimize endemic waterborne infectious disease.

Impact and Outcomes

Human Health Research Contributions