Step
1.1 Identifying Exposure Categories
Examples
Oak Estates Example
After gathering preliminary information, the health assessor must determine
the exposure pathway category for each identified exposure pathway at
Oak Estates. [Note: Oak Estates is a hypothetical community introduced in the first course in this series: "Public Health Assessment Overview- 1: Mission and Community."]
Each pathway will be categorized as completed, potential,
or eliminated based on the information about the site.
Findings. Site investigations state that Aroclor 1254 and
arsenic are in surface soil samples collected at the closed landfill.
People living in the retirement community built on the landfill have flower
gardens. No surface soil samples have been collected from the flower beds.
To identify the exposure pathway category, the health assessor considers
the five possible pathway elements: the contaminant source or release, the environmental
fate and transport, the exposure point or area, the exposure route, and the potentially exposed
population. The health assessor will likely identify the landfill as the
source of contamination and soil as the medium.
Consequently, the health assessor would probably make the following decisions
about the exposure pathway categories for Oak Estates.
The health assessor would reject the completed pathway category because
all five elements are not present.
The health assessor would assign a potential pathway category because
it is possible that the missing elements might be present or might have
been present even though the pathway elements cannot be identified.
The health assessor would reject the eliminated pathway category because
the findings do not rule out that all five pathway elements could be present.
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