Procedures for addressing uncertainty and variability in exposure to characterize potential health risk from trichloroethylene contaminated ground water at Beale Air Force Base in California

Abstract

Conservative deterministic, screening-level calculations of exposure and risk commonly are used in quantitative assessments of potential human-health consequences from contaminants in environmental media. However, these calculations generally are based on multiple upper-bound point estimates of input parameters, particularly for exposure attributes, and can therefore produce results for decision makers that actually overstate the need for costly remediation. Alternatively, a more informative and quantitative characterization of health risk can be obtained by quantifying uncertainty and variability in exposure. This process is illustrated in this report for a hypothetical population at a specific site at Beale Air Force Base in California, where there is trichloroethylene (TCE) contaminated ground water and a potential for future residential use. When uncertainty and variability in exposure were addressed jointly for this case, the 95th-percentile upper-bound value of individual excess lifetime cancer risk was a factor approaching 10 lower than the most conservative deterministic estimate. Additionally, the probability of more than zero additional cases of cancer can be estimated, and in this case it is less than 0.5 for a hypothetical future residential population of up to 26,900 individuals present for any 7.6-y interval of a 70-y time period. Clearly, the results from application of this probabilistic approach can provide reasonable and equitable risk-acceptability criteria for a contaminated site.