Conservatism and uncertainty in the development of toxicity reference values for use with functional grouping at the INEL
- Idaho National Engineering Lab., Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
Toxicity reference values (TRVs) are used in ecological risk assessment (ERA) to quantify the effect of a contaminant on ecological receptors. Extrapolation of toxicity data derived from surrogate species to receptors of concern at the site introduces uncertainty and conservatism into the risk assessment. Functional grouping was used at the INEL to group species based on similar taxonomic orders and tropic levels. Extrapolation of toxicity data to functional groups may introduce additional uncertainty and conservatism. Understanding of the uncertainty and conservatism inherent in a risk assessment is important when making risk management decisions and communicating the results to the public. This study examined the conservatism and uncertainty inherent in more traditional approaches to development of TRVs on selected species and functional groups. Several contaminants were selected based on availability of toxicity data. Contaminants with several high quality toxicity studies with chronic results on multiple species were selected. The known value was compared to the extrapolated values from each approach. This process was repeated for several species and contaminants as possible with the available data. This paper discusses and compares the uncertainty and conservatism of extrapolations from one species to the receptor of concern (or functional group).
- OSTI ID:
- 452034
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-961149--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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