Office of Health Hazard Assessment: Summary Statement

This office consists of six professionals and support personnel concerned with the evaluation of environmental health hazards due mainly to chemical agents. An effort initiated earlier to pull together toxicologic information on organ systems and their diseases in humans with environmental or occupational chemical exposures was continued. It received its impetus when the cause of the Legionaires' disease was suspected to be inadvertent exposure to a chemical agent. Many difficulties have been encountered in carrying out this compilation, particularly the utilization of anecdotal reports on cause/effect relationships, suggesting that the compilation of data needed experimental proof of cause-effect relationships. This office collaborates with other governmental agencies through the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, DHEW, to evaluate or critically review Environmental Impact Statements or Effluent Limitation Guidelines. This activity has been centered on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents, but also reviewed drafts and documents of other departments. During FY 1977 this office supplied information to most of the members of a Subcommittee on Human Health Consequences Due to Lead Exposure from Automobile Emissions sponsored by the DHEW Committee to Coordinate Toxicology and Related Programs. The document prepared by this Subcommittee was widely distributed and comments received from experts were incorporated into the final version to be published in ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH PERSPECTIVES (EHP). The contents served as background information to the EPA in their activity towards setting a standard. Subsequently, members of this office served for a considerable time as consultants to the EPA in preparation of the final EPA document. The DHEW Committee to Coordinate Toxicology and Related Programs created a Toxicology Information Subcommittee of which Dr. Damstra of this office is a member. It also created a DHEW Laboratory Chemical Carcinogens Safety Standards Subcommittee on which the Director of the Office of Health Hazard Assessment (OHHA) is a member helping in the determination of safety rules and reviewing the monographs written on safe handling of individual carcinogens. Other collaborative efforts served to assess the potential health hazards from the use of ethylene oxide as a chemosterilant in hospital sterilization of instruments and equipment, where the Director of OHHA served as Chairman of an HEW Subcommittee. The Director of OHHA also served on a Task Force on the Health Implications of Nitrilotriacetate, created by the International Joint Commission, Great Lakes Research Advisory Board, Windsor, Canada. With the activation of the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1977, this Institute was asked to supply a member for the Federal Committee for Selection of Substances for Testing in order to help the EPA carry out their newly assigned mandate. This Office supplied both member and alternate for this committee, which has to prepare a list of no more than 50 of the most important hazardous chemicals for which further toxicological testing is needed. A committee, composed of one member from each branch or laboratory of the Institute under the chairmanship of the Director, OHHA, prepared a priority list for in-house research on toxic chemicals. Since the designation of NIEHS as a WHOCollaborating Center, this office has supplied information, expertise, and consultation to WHO. For a meeting of a Scientific Group on Environmental Health Criteria held at Geneva, November 1976, two papers were submnitted on request by WHO, on Health Risk Assessment from Experimental Data (Low dose extrapolation; transposition