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Office of the Director Publications: 2003
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This page lists publication titles, citations and abstracts produced by NERL's Office of the Director for the year 2003, organized by Publication Type. Your search has returned
5 Matching Entries.
See also Office of the Director citations with abstracts:
1999,
2000,
2001,
2002,
2003,
2004,
2005,
2006,
2007,
2008
Technical Information Manager: Janice Sims - (706)-355-8011 or sims.janice@epa.gov
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Presented/Published |
| JOURNAL |
Accountability Within New Ozone Standards |
11/01/2003
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Foley, G. J., P. G. Georgopoulos, AND P. J. Lioy. Accountability Within New Ozone Standards. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 37(21):392A-399A, (2003).
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| Abstract:
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Over the past two decades, as part of the effort to develop the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), researchers have been using real human exposure data to help analyze the magnitude and extent of the risks from specific or multiple pollutants. Surrogates for exposure have also been used such as the ambient air quality measured at fixed monitoring sites. These approaches are based on available science. Meanwhile, during the past decade, researchers at the U.S. EPA, universities, and institutes have been developing better scientific approaches for measuring and modeling real or potential human exposures that explain hazardous exposure situations.
In parallel, the President, Congress, and the public have set higher expectations for government programs, such as NAAQS. These expectations were first defined through the evolution of the "risk assessment-risk management paradigm" and then by the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), which defines accountability for government program.
In this article we examine the challenges that EPA faces in its NAAQS program and how the scientific results of its National Exposure Research program, conducted by the National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) within EPA's Office of Research and Development and its partners, such as the Exposure Measurement & Assessment Program at the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI), can be used to achieve these higher expectations. Specifically, we will show the implications that accountability brings to the risk assessment-risk management paradigm. This will be done by stressing the importance of understanding human exposure and the linkages across the continuum from the emission of the causal agents or their precursors to effects and pollution risk. We will also present advances in air quality and exposure modeling tools that can assist in defining population exposure patterns. To address each of these issues, estimates of potential population exposures for the new standard for 8-hour (h) ozone standard will be used to demonstrate the implications of various control strategy scenarios on achieving exposure reductions that can meaningfully reduce population risk and provide benchmarks for accountability.
The U.S. EPA, through its Office of Research and Development, funded by the U.S. EPA National Exposure Research Laboratory through EPA HEADSUP has funded the research described hereunder and supports the CERM at EOHSI (CR827033). The NJDEP also supports the Ozone Research Center at EOHSI (AQ00-07). The article has been subjected to agency review and approved for publication.
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| PRESENTATION |
Development of Exposure Assessment Study Design for the National Children's Study (Ncs) |
12/16/2003
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Ozkaynak, A. H., J. J. Quackenboss, W. Strauss, M. G. Nishioka, J. Lehman, M. Morara, L. Ryan, S. Park, C. Arroya, AND D. Locke. Development of Exposure Assessment Study Design for the National Children's Study (Ncs). Presented at National Children's Study (NCS), Atlanta, GA, December 15-17, 2003.
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| Abstract:
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The general plan for the exposure monitoring component of the planned National Children's Study (NCS) is to measure indoor and outdoor concentrations and personal exposures for a variety of pollutants, including combustion products and pesticides. Due to the size of the study, it will be infeasible to measure every possible exposure for every child. Hence, an important statistical challenge is to develop an appropriate design that will allow adequate power to detect exposure effects, yet at the same time maintaining feasibility in terms of the number of children to be assessed for various exposure and bio-monitoring measurements. Since the study has a longitudinal design, a related challenge will be deciding a) which exposure-related measurements need to be assessed repeatedly over time; and b) the liming of such repeated exposure assessments. This EPA/ORD/NERL pilot study was conducted with technical assistance from EPA contractors (Battelle), Harvard University and Westat) to investigate the issue of an efficient exposure measurement design for the planned NCS study. This presentation describes the key findings from research to develop cost-effective statistical sampling strategies and optimal design considerations for the NCS.
This work has been funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under a Task Order Contract with Battelle (TO19, 68D99-011). It has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.
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| PRESENTATION |
Implications of Particulate Matter Research Program Upon Exposure Assessment and Apportionment and Attribution of Environmental Effects |
09/21/2003
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Cupitt, L. T. Implications of Particulate Matter Research Program Upon Exposure Assessment and Apportionment and Attribution of Environmental Effects. Presented at ISEA 2003 13th Annual Conference of the International Society of Exposure Analysis, Stresa, Italy, September 21-25, 2003.
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Recent personal exposure panel studies and monitoring programs addressing fine particulate matter (PM) and associated co-pollutants have elucidated the physical and statistical relationships between personal exposures, residential indoor concentrations (and sources), concentrations immediately outside residences, and the ambient concentrations across the community. The data describe changes in potential exposures as a function of time (day, season), the subpopulation involved and their activities, the nature of the housing stock, and a variety of ambient variables. Secondly, a substantial number of clinical and epidemiological research efforts have established sufficient coherence between the toxicological and the epidemiological data as to provide a level of "biologic plausibility" to the observational studies: nonetheless, a number of hypotheses still remain as to which of the various PM characteristics are potentially significant contributors to the observed health effects. In addition, a great deal of measurement data on the concentrations, variability, and frequency of occurrence for a number of components, including potential agents of observable health effects, are now becoming available from large field campaigns and from operation of measurement networks. These data on concentrations, exposures, and health end points are reviewed and analyzed with regard to: the statistical relationships between the components or factors and the observed health end points; the physical and biological plausibility of those relationships; the apportionment of observable health effects to the various PM components, factors, and sources; the implications of the data for identifying the components and factors that could be associated with the observed epidemiological effects; and the implications for exposure measurements of particulate matter components, the associated co-pollutants, and hazardous air pollutants.
This is an abstract of a proposed presentation and does not necessarily reflect the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policy. The actual presentation has not been peer reviewed by EPA. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.
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| PRESENTATION |
Implications of PM Research on Exposures: Apportionment and Attribution of Effects |
09/24/2003
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Implications of PM Research on Exposures: Apportionment and Attribution of Effects. Presented at International Society of Exposure Analysis, Stresa, Italy, September 21-25, 2003.
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| Abstract:
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There is no abstract available for this product. If further information is requested, please refer to the bibliographic citation and contact the person listed under Contact field.
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| PRESENTATION |
An Integrated Analysis of the Potential Effectiveness of Mercury Emission Reduction Strategies in the Great Lakes |
09/23/2003
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Sunderland, E. AND G. J. Foley. An Integrated Analysis of the Potential Effectiveness of Mercury Emission Reduction Strategies in the Great Lakes. Presented at Air Quality IV Conference, Arlington, VA, September 22-24, 2003.
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Using atmospheric transport and fate models, it has been possible to link the changes in emissions to to the change in atmospheric deposition for the last thirty years for the criteria air pollutants, but it has only been in the last decade that advances have been made to allow these linkages to be done for persistent toxic substances, including mercury. Today, for mercury, several mercury source receptor models exist, but one of them, which will be mentioned later, provides the ability to examine the annual source-receptor relationships to determine which sources and/or source regions contribute the most mercury deposited to an area such as each of the Great Lakes.
The linkage of the contributions of mercury coming from the atmosphere, the tributaries, the sediments and the non-point run-off to the uptake and/or the bioaccumulation in fish is a much more difficult problem. Therefore, in evaluating the potential effectiveness of mercury control strategies, it is easier to show the benefit in terms of changes in atmospheric deposition than it is in terms of changes in level of mercury in fish tissue.
However, mercury mass balance models are being developed for lakes with fish uptake included. Their use is hampered by both missing process information and the lack of data for development and evaluation. Nevertheless, it is possible to use such a model in a screening analysis to explore the sensitivities to the model parameters and the data. Using a range of values for missing or less certain information, key uncertainties can be hypothesized. This is demonstrated using an application of mercuty emission reductions from the 1996 coal fired utilities in the US and Canada and the predicted changes in fish uptake of mercury in Lake Ontario.
This paper developes a set of source-to-uptake linkages and evaluates the nature and magnitude, as quantitatively as possible, of the uncertainty in relationships. From this analysis, it attempts to identify the most critical scientific information that would improve these linkages in the future. This abstract has been subjected to Agency review and approved for publication.
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