The Evolution of Frameworks for Ecological Risk Assessment from the Red Book Ancestor

Abstract

The risk assessment framework presented in the National Research Council (NRC) Red Book played a key role in the development of ecological risk assessment (ERA). ERA frameworks have, however, developed along their own pathway and have significantly extended concepts that were introduced in the Red Book. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) commissioned the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in 1981 to develop and apply methods for ERA, the work focused on probabilistic analysis, since that seemed to be the essence of risk. When the Red Book appeared, it suggested that the use of a logical framework to guide the process was also an important aspect of risk assessment. Therefore, the ORNL investigators developed a framework similar to the Red Book framework but more suited to ERA. When EPA initiated a project to develop an official EPA framework for ERA, the ORNL framework was presented in a colloquium intended to obtain input from scientists outside EPA. Later, the NRC sponsored a workshop on ecological risk assessment that was attended by the leaders of the EPA framework project. The report produced from the workshop endorsed the concept of an ERA framework and proposed an integrated framework that included both human health and ecological risk assessment. The framework ultimately adopted by EPA extended the NRC and ORNL frameworks by providing a detailed description of the process and showing how the process could be applied to a broad range of situations. Since then, various ERA frameworks have been developed for use in other countries and for specific situations.