The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Generic Ecological Assessment Endpoints

ABSTRACT

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency determined that one of the major impediments to the advancement and application of ecological risk assessment is doubt concerning appropriate assessment endpoints. The Agency's Risk Assessment Forum determined that the best solution to this problem was to define a set of generic ecological assessment endpoints (GEAEs). They are assessment endpoints that are applicable to a wide range of ecological risk assessments; because they reflect the programmatic goals of the Agency, they are applicable to a wide array of environmental issues, and they may be estimated using existing assessment tools. They are not specifically defined for individual cases; some ad hoc elaboration by users is expected. The GEAEs are not exhaustive or mandatory. Although most of the Agency's ecological decisions have been based on organism-level effects, GEAEs are also defined for populations, ecosystems, and special places.

Keywords:

• ecological risk assessment
• endpoints
• problem formulation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This article is derived from a USEPA report that benefitted from reviews by 18 internal peer reviewers and 12 external peer reviewers, who are individually acknowledged in that report (USEPA 2003), and by the USEPA's Science Policy Council. The article itself was helpfully reviewed by Larry Barnthouse, Randy Bruins, and Bruce Hope. We dedicate this article to the memory of our friend and colleague, Doug Urban.

This work is the product of the U.S. government and is not copyrighted.

Notes

*Generic ecological assessment endpoints for which USEPA has identified existing policies and precedents, in particular the specific entities listed in the third column. Bold indicates protection by federal statute.

*This table summarizes material presented at length in Appendix A of USEPA (2003).