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National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program

U.S. Geological Survey
Fact Sheet 2005-3059

Health-Based Screening Levels and their Application to Water-Quality Data

By P.L. Toccalino, J.S. Zogorski, and J.E. Norman

To supplement existing Federal drinking-water standards and guidelines, thereby providing a basis for a more comprehensive evaluation of contaminant-occurrence data in a human-health context, USGS began a collaborative project in 1998 with USEPA, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, and the Oregon Health & Science University to calculate non-enforceable health-based screening levels. Screening levels were calculated for contaminants that do not have Maximum Contaminant Level values using a consensus approach that entailed (1) standard USEPA Office of Water methodologies (equations) for establishing Lifetime Health Advisory (LHA) and Risk-Specific Dose (RSD) values for the protection of human health, and (2) existing USEPA human-health toxicity information.

Table of Contents

Background
Screening levels expand human-health context for NAWQA findings
Evaluating ground-water data in a human-health context in New Jersey
Plans for application at the National scale
References
Contacts for additional information
The NAWQA Program

This report is available online in Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have the Adobe Reader, it is available for free download from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Download the report (PDF, 0.2 MB)

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For further information about this report, contact the National Water-Quality Assessment Program office.


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U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey
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Last modified: Tuesday, November 29 2016, 06:17:39 PM

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