Air Force Assignment Data Analysis Report

Abstract

Abstract : Risk assessors are often forced to use default, single point, assumptions of typical duration of exposure when performing risk assessments for military populations and their families due to the uncertainty of assignment tour lengths. This project uses a probabilistic approach to risk assessments to provide site specific time on station (i.e., residence time) distributions for both officer and enlisted personnel located at Air Force installations within the continental United States (CONUS). Five distinct assignment dates were investigated to evaluate temporal variations in residence time. A total of 369 spreadsheets containing 733 time-on-station distributions were prepared. Across all five data sets (1987, 1990, 1995, 1998, and 1999) the mean residence time on station was 915 days (2.51 years) for enlisted personnel and 692 days (1.90 years) for officers. This resulted in a factor of 3.59 and 4.74 less, respectively, than the default value of 9 years used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Human health risk estimates using a benzene inhalation exposure scenario in a Monte Carlo simulation, were found to be lower than the EPA mean risk estimates by factors of approximately 4 and 5 for enlisted and officer personnel, respectively.