Washington Office

The National Center for Environmental Assessment in Washington, DC (NCEA-Wash), is focused on the following areas of risk assessment:

• developing and implementing new methods into site- and chemical-specific assessments;
• improving the accuracy of risk characterizations for human health and ecological assessments;
• integrating quantitative information about human variability and uncertainty into risk assessments;
• developing advanced pharmacokinetic and mechanistic models;
• uncovering the molecular mechanisms that lead from exposure to adverse health consequences;
• identifying biomarkers of exposure and effects;
• improving extrapolations between exposure routes and between species; and
• providing guidance, tools, and training to enable others to conduct scientifically sound risk assessments.

NCEA-Wash Scientists, with expertise in toxicology, epidemiology, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and engineering, also conduct health and ecological risk assessments of chemicals in support of EPA's regulatory programs using the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database. IRIS, prepared and maintained by the EPA, is an electronic database containing information on human health effects that may result from exposure to various chemicals in the environment. IRIS was initially developed in response to a growing demand for consistent information on chemical substances for use in risk assessments, decision-making, and regulatory activities.