Toxicology and Hazard Assessment

The Toxicology and Hazard Assessment group is comprised of toxicologists and other health professionals who provide toxicology and risk assessment support to a variety of sponsors, mostly from the federal sector.  Group members have experience in acute, subchronic, and chronic toxicity; developmental and reproductive toxicology; carcinogenicity; genotoxicity; neurotoxicity; developmental neurotoxicology; veterinary toxicology; physiology; pharmacokinetics; clinical pathology; and qualitative and quantitative risk assessment.  The average on the job experience is 15 plus years and several group members are board certified in general toxicology.  Over the past 20 years staff have written over 10,000 toxicological and health risk assessments. Many of our federal sponsors are listed below along with comments on the scope of work performed:

US Department of the Army

    US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine (USACHPPM) – Technical support and analysis for deployed force protection; hazard materials vapor concentrations for future detection/monitoring systems as well as individual and collective protection; Formerly Utilized Defense Sites (FUDS) soil screening levels; Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGLs) for chemical warfare agent munition demilitarization.

US Department of Energy

    Technical support to the Office of Emergency Management to develop chemical specific Protective Action Criteria (PACs) for emergency response planning applications of over 3300 chemicals.

US Department of Homeland Security

    Technical support to the Chemical Restoration Operational Technology Demonstration Project to (1) develop cleanup guidelines for air and surfaces following a chemical terrorist event and (2) regulatory characterization of potential waste streams.

US Environmental Protection Agency

    Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) – Perform toxicological evaluations and human health risk assessments on pesticides for several OPP Divisions.  Over the past 15 years, hundreds of chemical specific assessments covering all toxicological disciplines have been performed.  A number of assessments evaluating the safety to cats and dogs of a variety of flea and tick products have also been conducted.

    Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT) – Derivation of chemical specific short term inhalation exposure values for the Acute Exposure Guideline Level Program for use in community planning in the event of a chemical release.  Evaluation of industry submitted data for the High Production Volume Chemical Program.

    Office of Research and Development’s National Homeland Security Research Center (ORD/NHSRC) – Derivation of short, intermediate, and longer-term inhalation and drinking water values for the Provisional Advisory Level (PAL) Program and associated related tasks.  These values will be available for use in determining reentry following intentional or natural disasters.

In this effort chemical specific human health exposure values are derived for drinking water and air.  These values assist emergency personnel responding to a manmade or natural disaster in making evacuation and reentry decisions.  As the figure indicates, the values derived fall within three PAL tiers, which increase in severity from PAL 1 to PAL 3.  As data permit, values are derived for four time periods (24 hours, 30 and 90 days, and 2 years) for each PAL tier for both air and drinking water.

    Office of Water (OW) – Preparation of Health Advisory and Support Documents on various chemicals and issues.

US Food and Drug Administration

    Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)– Toxicological review and assessment activities related to direct or indirect food additives.  These include review of chemical specific toxicological data in every toxicology discipline and special projects such as evaluation of data to support a possible Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) delisting.

    Center for Veterinary Medicine – Researching issues related to animal feeds.