Overview

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Main Steps

Identify data from key studies used to develop noncancer health guidelines.

Review the original journal article(s) that served as the basis for the noncancer health guidelines and more recent studies, if needed.

Evaluate the evidence to examine noncancer effects.

Evaluate the evidence to examine cancer effects.

Review toxicological information for other health effects (target organs and systems) with doses or air concentrations like those for your site. Compare site doses or air concentrations to the Levels of Significant Exposure (LSE) tables/figures in the ATSDR Toxicological Profile.

Review other contaminant-specific information that might influence a decision about whether harmful effects are possible.

Consult with the Associate Director for Science group to request from ATSDR a subject matter expert in toxicology or epidemiology. State partners should work through their technical project officer to make a request.

Approach

Throughout this primer, we will explain what is involved in each step of the toxicological evaluation process.

After you learn about each step, we will use our case study example to demonstrate how to perform each step.

When we are going to do an example, the word “Practice” will be in the heading. For practice, we will walk through each step using our class exercises, where we identified certain exposure scenarios requiring further evaluation in the toxicological evaluation.

As you recall from the steps in PHAT module 7 (section 3), we identified certain exposure scenarios from our training exercises that required a toxicological evaluation. We will evaluate those here.

  • In this primer, we will practice together by conducting a toxicological evaluation for residents drinking water from PW-3 contaminated with carbon tetrachloride. We’ll explain how to determine noncancer health effects when HQs exceed 1 and how to evaluate cancer risks that exceed 1E-6.
  • You’ll then apply what you learned to the arsenic case study exercise in the last section of this primer. You will conduct a toxicological evaluation for estimated exposure doses and cancer risks associated with arsenic in soil at the daycare that exceeded HQs of 1 and CRs of 1.0E-6. In addition, a toxicological evaluation is needed to evaluate the intermediate pica exposures, because no intermediate duration health guideline is available.
Resources to Support the In-Depth Analysis

There are several information sources you will use during the in-depth analysis. The most common sources are listed below.

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