Terrestrial Field Dissipation Workshop — The Environmental Protection Agency Office of Pesticide Programs sponsored a workshop on Terrestrial Field Dissipation which was held in Arlington, VA on July 23-25, 2002. Click here for the workshop agenda, speaker list, and discussion topics. This workshop involved government, industry, academic, consulting, and other interested parties to discuss strategies for harmonizing guidelines and protocols for field dissipation studies. The format of the three-day workshop included plenary sessions and breakout/discussion groups on a variety of topics including:

• use of field dissipation results in risk assessments;
• criteria for waiving field study requirements;
• use of conceptual models to design field studies;
• use of modular approach to track major routes of dissipation;
• foliar interception / dissipation and plant uptake;
• sampling issues; and
• case studies

Speakers and participants included: Canada PMRA, U.S. EPA-OPP / EFED, California DPR and Florida DACS, Syngenta Canada, Ag-Quest, USDA and other agencies, Syracuse Research Corporation, Waterborne, Dow AgroSciences, DuPont, Aventis, Bayer, and BASF.

SRC has provided technical support to U.S. EPA Office of Emergency and Remedial Response (Superfund Office) in developing probabilistic risk assessment for over 5 years. "Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund: Volume III - Part A, Process for Conducting Probabilistic Risk Assessment" has just been completed. This guidance is one of the top priority projects under the Superfund Reform activities. It provides guidance on the use of probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) methods for human and ecological risk assessment. Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund (RAGS) Volume 3 is the first major addition to the Superfund risk assessment guidance since RAGS Vol. 1 and 2 were released in 1989. At least 12 SRC employees have made significant contributions to this guidance, including our Denver office, plus collaborations with Syracuse University and University of Idaho. The guidance was awarded EPA's prestigious Science Achievement award for significant contributions towards improving risk assessment guidance for Superfund. SRC is continuing to provide support in the next phase of the guidance, RAGS Volume 3 - Part B: Case Studies of Applications of PRA. See the Superfund publications website for Volume 3 Part A available in .pdf format.

SRC's EPIWIN Estimation Software is now available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency via free Internet download from the following web-page:

www.epa.gov/oppt/exposure/docs/episuitedl.htm

SRC is still selling "derivative" forms of the EPIWIN Suite of programs (DLL versions, source code licenses, Internet versions) ... for additional information, please contact Bill Meylan at meylan@syrres.com or Dr. Philip Howard at howardp@syrres.com.

A publication by Philip Howard and William Meylan appears in the March 2001 issue, pages 91-96 of Chemical Engineering magazine entitled "Toxic Chemicals - Assessing Environmental Fate and Exposure". The article covers sources of physiochemical properties, environmental degradation and transport rates. Available monitoring data for potential environmental contaminants are listed in the recommended order of use starting with experimental values available on-line, followed by databases to identify potential references containing experimental values, and finally estimation methods when experimental values are not available.

SRC's free online databases are featured in the Scout Report, a publication of the Internet Scout Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The Scout Report describes "new and newly discovered Internet resources of interest to researchers and educators". Described are Ozone Depletion Potentials and Global Warming Potentials, The Toxic Substances Control Act Test Submission Database, Log Kow, Environmental Fate Databases, and Physical Properties Database.

A report evaluating potential POP (Persistent Organic Pollutants) or PBT (Persistent, Bioaccumulative, and Toxic Compounds) was recently prepared with support from the Chlorine Chemistry Council by Dallas Aronson and Philip Howard. In this report procedures are discussed for determining if a chemical should be classified as persistent using criteria that are being considered internationally. Due to the inherent variability in experimentally-measured degradation rates, persistence criteria should not be considered as specific cutoff values but as guidelines for making scientifically-valid judgments regarding the ability of a compound to persist or not in an environmental medium. See the complete report.

"Hats off to the SRC and D. Aronson and P.H. Howard for the report Anaerobic Biodegradation of Organic Chemicals in Groundwater: A Summary of Field and Laboratory Studies, which is made available to many interested users (via the website). Congratulations and thank you very much!" - received from L. Hrapovic, of London, Ontario, Canada.

The Environmental Science Center of Syracuse Research Corporation is allowing free access to the most up-to-date version of the Toxic Substances Control Act Test Submission database on the World Wide Web.

The EFDB and TSCATS databases now include a feature that allows for date restriction when performing searches!