 |
| | |
| Setting Exposure Standards: A Decision Process Environ Health Perspect Neurotoxicology Division, National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Abstract
Increased emphasis on routine screening of chemicals for potential neurotoxicity has resulted in the development of testing guidelines and standardized procedures. A multiphased, tiered-testing strategy has been proposed by numerous expert panels to evaluate large numbers of chemicals. In a regulatory context, however, a formal tiered-testing approach is not used, mostly because of the constraints of differing regulatory authorities and the potential cost of such a testing strategy. Instead, current regulatory decision making utilizes all available animal and human data to identify a critical adverse effect which is then used for setting standards. Although the current decision-making process does not use a formal tiered-testing approach, it appears to identify chemicals with neurotoxic effects. An analysis of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency integrated risk information system (IRIS) indicates that about 20% of the chemicals having standards or health advisories are based on neurotoxicity. -- Environ Health Perspect 104(Suppl 2) :401-405 (1996) Key words: neurotoxicity, screening, tiered testing, risk assessment, IRIS
The full version of this article is available for free in HTML format. |
|
|
|
|
