Guidance on Selecting Age Groups for Monitoring and Assessing Childhood Exposures to Environmental Contaminants (Final)

Risk Assessment Forum

Federal Register Notices

FR Notice: February 9, 2006

Notice:

EPA announced the release of this final document in the February 9, 2006 Federal Register Notice.

A major issue facing the Agency is how to consistently consider age-related changes in behavior and physiology when assessing early lifestage exposure and potential dose. Key to this issue is how to capture these changes in an assessment of risks from exposure to environmental contaminants.

Background

This final document, Guidance on Selecting Age Groups for Monitoring and Assessing Childhood Exposures to Environmental Contaminants (PDF) (50 pp, 388KB, About PDF), is intended to provide guidance to EPA scientists on selecting age groups to consider when assessing childhood exposure and potential dose to environmental contaminants. A consistent set of childhood age groups, supported by an underlying scientific rationale, will improve Agency exposure and risk assessments for children and will assist the Agency in implementing various regulatory initiatives. In addition, these age groups will guide future analyses of exposure factors data as well as new research and data collection efforts.

History/Chronology

Jul 2000 Risk Assessment Forum sponsored workshop identified the needs for this guidance.
Oct 2001 Technical Paper on Adequacy of Exposure Factors Data for Age Groups.
Dec 2003 Guidance document is submitted for public comment.
Apr 2004 External Peer Review of the Guidance document (see related Links).
Jan 2006 EPA released the final report.

Next Steps

This is the Final Document.

Downloads/Related Links

Additional Information

On March 16, 2006, a correction was made to the document Guidance on Selecting Age Groups for Monitoring and Assessing Childhood Exposures to Environmental Contaminants, EPA/630/P-03/003F, (November 2005). The following changes were made to Table 1 on page 5:

Replace NATA* with NATA* National Scale Assessment (1996 emissions year).
Replace NATA Age groups entry with the following: 0-4, 5-11, 12-17, 18-64 years
Replace NAAQS* with NAAQS* 1996 Ozone Risk Assessment for Children.
Replace NAAQS Age Groups entry with the following: 6-13 , 14-18 years

Citation

U.S. EPA. Guidance on Selecting Age Groups for Monitoring and Assessing Child-Hood Exposures to Environmental Contaminants (Final). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/630/P-03/003F.