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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Risk appraisal for chemical mixtures: Assessing the contribution of individual chemicals to total adverse health effects

Conference ·
OSTI ID:5457340

Hazardous-waste sites are contaminated typically with a number of different chemicals, each of which can produce specific adverse health effects. For any toxic substance that might be present at such sites, the term hazard refers to an adverse outcome and risk refers to the probability that the adverse outcome will occur. For carcinogens, the State of California Department of Health Services (CDHS) has developed applied action levels (AALs) to maintain the risk of cancer at or below acceptable levels. For noncarcinogens, CDHS has developed AALs to prevent non-cancer health hazards. An AAL is a concentration of a contaminant in a source medium that, when exceeded, is expected to cause an unacceptable risk of adverse health effects in the exposed human population. We have developed a set of procedures that a risk manager can use to evaluate whether a hazardous-waste site poses an unacceptable level of risk to human health from the presence of chemicals that are either carcinogenic, noncarcinogenic, or both. On the basis of this determination the risk manager can then decide if the site is a candidate for remediation. Moreover, the methods presented here will permit the risk manager to assess the contribution of each contaminant to either the total carcinogenic risk or the total noncarcinogenic hazard associated with the site. 4 refs., 2 figs,

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
DOE; STOFCA; USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); California State Government, Sacramento, CA (United States)
DOE Contract Number:
W-7405-ENG-48
OSTI ID:
5457340
Report Number(s):
UCRL-JC-105147; CONF-910659--31; ON: DE91017092
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English