{"title":"Locally relevant ambient water quality criteria to protect human health.","authors":"Brad Barnhart, Camille Flinders, Jayme Coyle","doi":"10.1093/inteam/vjaf083","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) uses a deterministic, risk-based framework to derive national recommendations for ambient water quality criteria protective of human health (AWQC) through the ingestion of water and aquatic organisms. States are required to either adopt these recommendations or propose scientifically defensible alternatives. The deterministic approach has faced criticism for relying on multiple high-percentile input parameters, leading to criteria disconnected from actual risk. Consequently, while some states adopt US EPA's criteria recommendations in their entirety, others utilize different input parameters or alternative approaches to derive criteria that better represent local exposure conditions. Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) represents a scientifically robust alternative that offers transparency and flexibility by using full data distributions rather than point estimates to define exposures. This enables a clear linkage between the acceptable risk targets and affected population subgroups. Although US EPA has provided guidance supporting the use of PRA in other regulatory programs, direct guidance on implementing a PRA approach for deriving state-specific AWQC is lacking. This work explores US EPA's risk-based framework and applies both deterministic and probabilistic approaches to quantify patterns in AWQC under different criteria derivation scenarios that alter assumptions of exposure and risk. We implement an open-source R Shiny tool designed to reduce technical barriers and facilitate practical adoption by state agencies, including those without specialized modeling expertise. Outcomes highlight how exposure assumptions, risk thresholds, and derivation approaches impact AWQC; offer a practical guidance for environmental agencies to derive locally relevant and scientifically defensible criteria; and may serve as a basis for a future US EPA technical support document on the use of PRA for AWQC derivation.</p>","PeriodicalId":13557,"journal":{"name":"Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":8.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management","FirstCategoryId":"93","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/inteam/vjaf083","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) uses a deterministic, risk-based framework to derive national recommendations for ambient water quality criteria protective of human health (AWQC) through the ingestion of water and aquatic organisms. States are required to either adopt these recommendations or propose scientifically defensible alternatives. The deterministic approach has faced criticism for relying on multiple high-percentile input parameters, leading to criteria disconnected from actual risk. Consequently, while some states adopt US EPA's criteria recommendations in their entirety, others utilize different input parameters or alternative approaches to derive criteria that better represent local exposure conditions. Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) represents a scientifically robust alternative that offers transparency and flexibility by using full data distributions rather than point estimates to define exposures. This enables a clear linkage between the acceptable risk targets and affected population subgroups. Although US EPA has provided guidance supporting the use of PRA in other regulatory programs, direct guidance on implementing a PRA approach for deriving state-specific AWQC is lacking. This work explores US EPA's risk-based framework and applies both deterministic and probabilistic approaches to quantify patterns in AWQC under different criteria derivation scenarios that alter assumptions of exposure and risk. We implement an open-source R Shiny tool designed to reduce technical barriers and facilitate practical adoption by state agencies, including those without specialized modeling expertise. Outcomes highlight how exposure assumptions, risk thresholds, and derivation approaches impact AWQC; offer a practical guidance for environmental agencies to derive locally relevant and scientifically defensible criteria; and may serve as a basis for a future US EPA technical support document on the use of PRA for AWQC derivation.
期刊介绍:
Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management (IEAM) publishes the science underpinning environmental decision making and problem solving. Papers submitted to IEAM must link science and technical innovations to vexing regional or global environmental issues in one or more of the following core areas:
Science-informed regulation, policy, and decision making
Health and ecological risk and impact assessment
Restoration and management of damaged ecosystems
Sustaining ecosystems
Managing large-scale environmental change
Papers published in these broad fields of study are connected by an array of interdisciplinary engineering, management, and scientific themes, which collectively reflect the interconnectedness of the scientific, social, and environmental challenges facing our modern global society:
Methods for environmental quality assessment; forecasting across a number of ecosystem uses and challenges (systems-based, cost-benefit, ecosystem services, etc.); measuring or predicting ecosystem change and adaptation
Approaches that connect policy and management tools; harmonize national and international environmental regulation; merge human well-being with ecological management; develop and sustain the function of ecosystems; conceptualize, model and apply concepts of spatial and regional sustainability
Assessment and management frameworks that incorporate conservation, life cycle, restoration, and sustainability; considerations for climate-induced adaptation, change and consequences, and vulnerability
Environmental management applications using risk-based approaches; considerations for protecting and fostering biodiversity, as well as enhancement or protection of ecosystem services and resiliency.