Example Activities

Environmental data are any measurements or information that describe environmental processes, location, or conditions; ecological or health effects and consequences; or the performance of environmental technology. For EPA, environmental data include both primary data (i.e., information collected directly from measurements) and secondary/existing data (i.e., data that were collected for other purposes or obtained from other sources, including literature, industry surveys, models, data bases, and information systems). Example activities covered by the EPA Quality System that involve environmental data include, but are not limited to:

Characterize and/or evaluate the states and/or conditions of environmental or ecological systems and the health of human populations;
Characterize and/or evaluate chemical, biological, physical, or radioactive constituents in environmental and ecological systems, and their behavior and associated interfaces in those systems, including exposure assessment, transport, and fate;
Establish the ambient conditions in air, water, sediments, soil, etc. in terms of physical, chemical, radiological, or biological characteristics;
Determine and/or categorize radioactive, hazardous, toxic, and mixed wastes in the environment and to establish their relationships with and/or impact on human health and ecological systems;
Quantify and/or monitor the waste and effluent discharges to the environment from processes and operations (e.g., energy generation, metallurgical processes, chemicals production), during either normal or upset conditions (i.e., operating conditions that cause pollutant or contaminant discharges);
Develop and/or evaluate environmental technology for waste treatment, storage, remediation, and disposal; pollution prevention; and pollution control and the use of the technology to generate and/or collect data (e.g., treatability and pilot studies);
Map environmental processes and conditions, and/or human health risk data, etc. (e.g., geographic information system);
Support enforcement and/or compliance monitoring efforts;
Develop or evaluate methods for use in the collection, analysis, and use of environmental data;
Develop and/or evaluate models of environmental processes and conditions and use models to characterize environmental processes or conditions;
Develop, revise, or use information technology and management system operations that impact the quality of the results of environmental programs (e.g., electronic databases with environmental information including data entry, handling, transmission and analysis and laboratory information management systems); and
Monitor or address concerns over the occupational health and safety of personnel in EPA facilities (e.g., indoor air quality measurements) and in the field (e.g., chemical dosimetry, radiation dosimetry).

Example Activities

q Navigation