M6 AM Suspended and Bedded Sediments and Nutrients: Exposure-response Relationships
Monday, 14 November 2005: 8:00 AM - 11:40 AM in 324-326

(COR-1117-822363) An ecoepidemiological approach to criteria setting.

Cormier, S¹, ¹ United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Center for Environmental Assessment

ABSTRACT- As the more states are charged with development of criteria to protect ecosystems from pollutants such as sediments, temperature, dissolved oxygen, and organic enrichment, an ecoepidemiological approach may offer the best alternative to the practice of setting criteria based solely on laboratory toxicity tests. Ecoepidemiology is the study of injuries to organisms, populations, ecosystems, and the services of nature. As in clinical epidemiology, it involves the description of the effect, identification of mechanisms and causal pathways, and determination of probable causes. It does not depend on hypothesis testing, but rather on determination of the candidate cause that is best supported by the available evidence. The same types of information that are used to demonstrate a likely effect at one site can be used to describe ranges of exposures that are likely to cause effects at other locations. In this approach, increased confidence in the criteria can come from: 1. the use of multiple types of exposure-response associations, 2. the use of observed associations from many locations, 3. the consideration of exposures for a wide variety of organisms, 4. the incorporation of field conditions and background levels and 5. the identification of thresholds for individual species. In addition, the approach has practical advantages including: 1. the use of data sets from resource agency monitoring programs, 2. the use of evidence from restoration, which increases confidence in future management decisions, 3. the integration of controlled experiments with the field evidence. 4. the incorporation of qualitative observations important to influential constituents and stakeholders and 5. increased relevance to specific locations. Although this ecoepidemiological approach has not been implemented, these considerations suggest that it is likely to succeed where more conventional approaches have not. Although, reviewed by EPA this abstract may not necessarily reflect official Agency policy

Key words: ecoepidemiology, ecological effects, causality