The United States Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) in a January 7th Federal Register notice announced a 45 day public comment period for the External Review Draft of the Guidelines for Human Exposure Assessment (“Draft Guidelines”). See 81 Fed. Reg. 774.
The Draft Guidelines is a revised version of the original document published in 1992.
EPA notes as rationale for updating the original document that it:
… was published in 1992 , reflecting the state-of-the-science in the 1970s and 1980s. Since its publication, the field of exposure science has undergone significant transformation in methods and approaches, which EPA has incorporated into its policies and practices to better align with the current state-of-the-science. The 1992 guidelines are being updated to reflect the updated methods and approaches.
The agency states that the Draft Guidelines “builds on topics covered in the 1992 exposure guidelines including planning and scoping for an assessment, data acquisition and use, modeling, and considerations of uncertainty in exposure assessment.”
The Draft Guidelines are stated to include new material on planning and conducting an observational human exposure measurement study and considerations of lifestages and sensitive populations in exposure assessment.
An external peer review will be conducted by EPA at a later date.
The Draft Guidelines may be obtained at http://www.epa.gov/osa/guidelines-human-exposure-assessment.
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