A NATIVE-AMERICAN EXPOSURE SCENARIO

EPA's Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund (RAGS) and later document s provide guidance for estimating exposures received from suburban and agricultural activity patterns and lifestyles. However, these methods are not suitable for typical tribal communities whose members pursue, at least in part, traditional lifestyles. These lifestyles are derive d from a long association with all of the resources in a particular re gion. We interviewed 35 members of a Columbia River Basin tribe to dev elop a lifestyle-based subsistence exposure scenario that represents a midrange exposure that a traditional tribal member would receive. Thi s scenario provides a way to partially satisfy Executive Order 12898 o n environmental justice,((1)), which requires a specific evaluation of impacts from federal actions to peoples with subsistence diets. Becau se a subsistence diet is only a portion of what is important to a trad itional lifestyle, we also used information obtained from the intervie ws to identify parameters for evaluating impacts to environmental and sociocultural quality of life.