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The Risk Forums, sponsored by the Office of the Chief Economist's Office of Risk Assessment and Cost Benefit Analysis and the Food Safety and Inspection Service's Risk Assessment Division, provide an opportunity for discussion of a broad range of policy-related scientific, and methodological issues concerning risk assessment. Forums are open to all public and private risk assessors.
Join the ORACBA mailing list and receive notice of all forums and the monthly ORACBA Risk News/Calendar. Join by sending an e-mail to Jennifer Callahan. In the Subject line enter "Mailing List" and be sure to include your phone number and e-mail address. |
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2008 Forums
May 13, 2008
Agrifood Nanotechnology: Upstream Assessment of Risk and Oversight
Prof. Jennifer Kuzma
Center for Science, Technology, and Public Policy
Humphrey Institute, University of Minnesota
Recently, nanotechnology and regulatory policy has been receiving more attention in public and academic circles. However, oversight issues associated with applications for agricultural and food systems remain largely unexplored. Agrifood nanotechnology is at a critical stage of development in which informed analysis can help shape funding priorities, risk assessment, and oversight activities. In this talk, I will present the approach and results of two projects that were designed to help society and policy makers anticipate and prepare for challenges posed by convergent applications of agrifood nanotechnology:1) an analysis of agrifood nanotechnology R&D projects, including a taxonomy of types of technologies, endpoints in the farm to table continuum, and qualitative risk-benefit rankings, and 2) a case-study approach for more in-depth study of the risk, regulatory, and societal issues that may be associated with select products resulting from R&D. The goals of both projects were to identify data, risk assessment, regulatory policy, and engagement needs for overseeing these products so they can be addressed prior to market entry. Our approach, termed Upstream Oversight Assessment (UOA), has potential as a key element of anticipatory governance.
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2007 Forums
Nov 19, 2007
Dietary Exposure Assessment at the Food and Drug Administration: A comparison of exposure assessment methods used in the Total Diet Study and analyses of individual food products
Dr. Michael DiNovi and Katie Egan
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
For over forty years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has conducted the Total Diet Study to monitor levels of pesticide residues, chemical contaminants, metals, radionuclides and other substances in food. The results of this monitoring program are used to estimate dietary exposure to these substances by the U.S. population. The FDA also collects samples of individual foods, outside of the Total Diet Study sampling protocol, in response to emerging food safety issues. Two recent efforts to sample individual foods addressed acrylamide and perchlorate levels in certain types of foods. Results from individual food samples are also used to estimate dietary exposure.
This Risk Forum will compare and contrast the dietary exposure techniques used by the FDA for the Total Diet Study with the exposure assessment techniques used with individual food sampling. The role of food recipes and food consumption surveys, such as the Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII) and the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), in the dietary assessment will be discussed. The use of probabilistic models in dietary exposure assessments, such as the Environ Dietary Exposure Assessment (EDEA,) will also be addressed. Finally, interpretation of the results of these two different dietary exposure assessments will be examined.
Nov. 13, 2007
Are interdisciplinary approaches of any use to economists and risk assessors?
A survey of recent interdisciplinary research efforts at the National Science Foundation
Dr. Robert OConnor
National Science Foundation
Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences
Come explore the use of interdisciplinary approaches to increase the understanding and effectiveness of decision making by individuals, groups, organizations, and society and explore whether interdisciplinary approaches are of use to economists or risk assessors. Dr. O'Connor will describe research funded by the Decision, Risk and Management Sciences program and by special interdisciplinary competitions at the National Science Foundation, as well as discuss future applications of interdisciplinary approaches for solving problems that involve risk.
Oct 16, 2007 Spring Valley Public Health Scoping Study
Legacy of US WWI Chemical Weapons Research: Case-Study of Environmental Epidemiology, Risk and Community Health Assessment in Washington, DC
Dr. Mary Fox
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Chemical warfare research, testing, and disposal were conducted during and immediately after World War I on the American University Campus and surrounding areas now known as the Spring Valley neighborhood of Washington, DC. In 1993, a contractor unearthed buried military ordnance. Subsequent investigations revealed disposal pits containing laboratory materials; chemical weapons agent and degradates; and surface soil with elevated arsenic concentrations. Remediation of soil arsenic is underway and exposure and health investigations have been conducted.
Community health concerns remain. An environmental health scoping study was conducted to: (1) Describe community health in Spring Valley; (2) Identify health risks of past and present activities; (3) Identify gaps in the existing health and environmental information; and (4) Recommend studies to fill remaining gaps. Results of the analysis comprising community health and risk assessments, and spatial analysis of exposure and health outcomes will be presented. |
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2006 Forums
ORACBA Risk Forum, GeoSTAC (GeoSpatial Tools and Access): a new GIS tool to assist risk assessments
Scott Jackson, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist, Risk Assessment
BASF and Chairman, CropLife America
Environmental Risk Assessment Committee
On behalf of the CropLife America Environmental Exposure Modeling Workgroup Dr. Jackson demontrated the use of GeoSTAC, a new GIS tool for ARCGIS applications created to assemble and display data critical to risk assessors. Dr. Jackson’s presentation provided a brief overview of the use of GIS and its role in pesticide risk assessments and risk communication. GeoSTAC includes three new tools that can be added into ARCGIS to easily join tables to geospatial data, extract features and attributes from several sources and aggregate and summarize the data to graphically depict results to decision makers. While GeoSTAC does not perform risk assessments directly, it assembles the information necessary for a risk assessment in an easily assessable format. Dr. Jackson demonstrated the use of the tool to refine the geographic area analyzed in an ecological risk assessment of the use of a pesticide in a region where there is an endangered species present.
January
Environmental Benefits of Conservation Buffers
Dr. Richard Lowrance
USDA-ARS Southeast Watershed Research Laboratory
Dr. Lowrance discussed the environmental benefits of conservation buffers and wetlands. He presented empirical
data on the effect of buffers on reducing runoff volume and nutrients. He will discussed the use of the Riparian Ecosystem Management Model (REMM) to simulate the effect of riparian buffers. Dr. Lowrance is an ecologist at the Southeast Watershed Research Laboratory in Tifton, GA. His research focuses on measuring and predicting the water quality
impacts of best management practices and conservation buffers in fields, farms and watersheds.
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2005 Forums
September
Focusing on the Risk Decision: Improving Communication between Risk Assessors, Risk Managers, and Research Scientists
Dr. Warner North, President and Principal Scientist
NorthWorks, Inc.
March
BMP Evaluations Using SWAT Model and Associated Uncertainties
Dr. Adel Shirmohammadi
Biological Resources Engineering Department
University of Maryland
College Park, MD
Dr. Shirmohammadi and his research associate, Dr. Chu, presented the results of a simulation study investigating the placement of non-structural best management practices (BMPs) in a small agricultural watershed in the Piedmont region of Maryland. The presentation covered calibration, validation and application of the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) in Maryland's Monocacy River. Ten years of monitoring data on hydrology and water quality in the Monocacy River were used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the SWAT model. Results of simulations assessing several non-structural BMP's and thi=eir impact on nutrient discharge reduction were presented. A unique aspect of this modeling effort is the use of a Monte Carlo Latin Hypercube Sampling technique in combination with SWAT. The presentation discussed the use of probabilistic techniques in interpreting the uncertainties involved in the SWAT model's output and its implications. |
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Last Modified: 06/12/2008 |
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