A SCREENING METHOD FOR RANKING AND SCORING CHEMICALS BY POTENTIAL HUMAN HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS

Potential impacts of chemical releases are often evaluated by regulato rs, industry, and others to set regulatory action priorities, to make business decisions, and to target pollution prevention efforts. A chem ical ranking and scoring method entitled ''Chemical Hazard Evaluation for Management Strategies'' (CHEMS-1) has been developed as a screenin g tool to provide a relative assessment of chemical hazards to human h ealth and the environment. The purpose of this method is to place chem ical release data into perspective by evaluating both the toxic effect s of chemicals and the potential exposure to those chemicals. This is done by combining measures of chemical toxicity pertaining to both hum an health and the environment with chemical release amounts and inform ation on environmental persistence and bioaccumulation. The CHEMS-1 wa s initially developed to select priority chemicals for assessing safer substitutes for major product and process uses, where chemicals were selected from Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data and annual pesticide usage data. A two-tiered approach was adopted with CHEMS-1 presented here representing the first, or screening-level, tier.