Scientific and Societal Considerations in Selecting Assessment Endpoints for Environmental Decision Making

Strange, Elizabeth M.; Lipton, Joshua; Beltman, Douglas; Snyder, Blaine D.

doi:10.1100/tsw.2002.168

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In many instances sociological, economic and political implications are of undisputed value to the final endpoints selection decision. It is often the case that such factors determine the level of unacceptable risk much more than pure scientific ones [37].…”

Section: Assessment Endpoints Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Affecting Risk Assessment of Pesticides in Water Bodies: A Review

Vassiliou¹

2016

MOJT

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Pesticides pose a significant threat to the environment in terms of toxic effects. However pesticides toxicity is shaped by exposure factors and ecosystem characteristics. Such factors determine whether and in what extent the pesticide's toxic potential will be actually expressed. Evaluation of the impact of such factors upon the pesticides toxic potential in a given environment is the task of risk assessment. The present study reviews the factors affecting the source, application pattern, load and availability of pesticides to water bodies, determining in this way the exposure status. Further on new trends in toxicity testing e.g. tiered and tailor made methodologies as well as the enhancement of the predictive principle in pesticides risk assessment are highlighted. Finally deterministic and probabilistic approaches in pesticide risk characterization are discussed.

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Section: Assessment Endpoints Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Factors Affecting Risk Assessment of Pesticides in Water Bodies: A Review

Vassiliou¹

2016

MOJT

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“…In the final rule for New Sources intakes, signed 9 November 2001, the EPA did not define AEI. Because no definition has been established, the debate over AEI continues, in part because the context for such a definition involves societal as well as scientific considerations [6]. Indeed, one of the more contentious debates during public meetings held in conjunction with promulgating the new 316(b) rules has been how to determine what level of organization to assess.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Attainment of the Designated Aquatic Life Use to Determine Adverse Environmental Impact

Seegert

2002

The Scientific World JOURNAL

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Section 316(b) of the Clean Water Act requires that cooling-water intake structures (CWIS) use Best Technology Available (BTA) to minimize adverse environmental impacts (AEI). The U.S. EPA has not defined AEI, and there is no clear consensus regarding its definition. Nonetheless, operational definitions are necessary to evaluate design alternatives and to measure the success of mitigative measures. Rather than having to develop measures of aquatic health that are highly site-specific, controversial, and often unlikely to elicit agreement from all sides of the environmental “fence”, it may be more productive to use existing ecological assessment tools. Aquatic Life Uses (ALU) already provide a regulatory framework to assess the quality (health) of the aquatic community in various habitats (e.g., warmwater habitat, exceptional warmwater habitat). Attainment of the ALU indicates that further point source controls are unnecessary, whereas nonattainment indicates that those pollutants or stressors causing the nonattainment must be reduced. A similar approach for existing water intakes is recommended. That is, attainment of the designated ALU will be taken as an indication that there is no AEI. Although attainment of the ALU may not be a foolproof indicator of a lack of AEI, this approach seems more reasonable that using scarce monetary resources to fix problems that likely do not exist, or having both regulators and the regulated community expend their resources debating whether various observed biological responses do or do not constitute AEI.

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“…Science alone is not and never will be in a position to provide an acceptable definition for AEI under §316(b) or for any other type of ecosystem modification [19,34,35,36]. Final determination of AEI under §316(b) is made by the regulatory agency based on joint consideration of risks of AEI and other factors, as strongly emphasized elsewhere in this volume [16,37,38,39,40,41].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Blueprint for the Problem Formulation Phase of EPA-Type Ecological Risk Assessments for 316(b) Determinations

Winkle¹,

Dey²,

Jinks³

et al. 2002

The Scientific World JOURNAL

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The difference between management objectives focused on sustainability of fish populations and the indigenous aquatic community, and a management objective focused on minimizing entrainment and impingement losses accounts for much of the ongoing controversy surrounding §316(b). We describe the EPA’s ecological risk assessment framework and recommend that this framework be used to more effectively address differences in management objectives and structure §316(b) determinations. We provide a blueprint for the problem formulation phase of EPA-type ecological risk assessments for cooling-water intake structures (CWIS) at existing power plant facilities. Our management objectives, assessment endpoints, conceptual model, and generic analysis plan apply to all existing facilities. However, adapting the problem formulation process for a specific facility requires consideration of the permitting agency’s guidelines and level of regulatory concern, as well as site-specific ecological and technical differences. The facility-specific problem formulation phase is designed around the hierarchy of biolo gical levels of organization in the generic conceptual model and the sequence of cause-effect events and risk hypotheses represented by this model. Problem formulation is designed to be flexible in that it can be tailored for facilities where §316(b) regulatory concern is low or high. For some facilities, we anticipate that the assessment can be completed based on consideration of susceptibility alone. At the other extreme, a high level of regulatory concern combined with the availability of extensive information and consideration of costly CWIS mitigation options may result in the ecological risk assessment relying on analyses at all levels. Decisions on whether to extend the ecological risk assessment to additional levels should be based on whether regulatory or generator concerns merit additional analyses and whether available information is adequate to support such analyses. In making these decisions, the functional dependence between levels of analysis must be considered in making the transition to the analysis phase and risk estimation component of the ecological risk assessment. Regardless of how the generic analysis plan is modified to develop a facility-specific analysis plan, the resulting plan should be viewed as a tool for comparing representative species and alternative CWIS options by focusing on relative changes (i.e., proportional or percent changes) in various measures. The analysis plan is specifically designed to encourage consideration of multiple lines of evidence and to characterize uncertainties in each line of evidence. Multiple lines of evidence from different levels of analysis, obtained using both prospective and retrospective techniques, provide a broader perspective on the magnitude of potential effects and associated uncertainties and risks. The implications of the EPA’s recent (April 2002) proposed regulations for existing facilities on the applicability of this blueprint are briefly considered.

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Scientific and Societal Considerations in Selecting Assessment Endpoints for Environmental Decision Making

Cited by 6 publications

References 24 publications

Factors Affecting Risk Assessment of Pesticides in Water Bodies: A Review

Factors Affecting Risk Assessment of Pesticides in Water Bodies: A Review

Using Attainment of the Designated Aquatic Life Use to Determine Adverse Environmental Impact

A Blueprint for the Problem Formulation Phase of EPA-Type Ecological Risk Assessments for 316(b) Determinations

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