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SOT Members Participate in Virginia Inhalation
Toxicology Advisory Group
Submitted by John B. Morris
To facilitate the development of a scientifically-based approach to regulate hazardous air pollutants, the State of Virginia formed the Virginia Inhalation Toxicology Advisory Group. Through an outreach effort the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality solicited volunteer members from various academic, industry, citizen, and professional groups, including SOT. Two members of the Society serve on this group, Kimber White representing Virginia Commonwealth University and John Morris, representing SOT. Virginia currently regulates hazardous air pollutants on the basis of Significant Ambient Air Concentrations, the values of which were derived more than 20 years ago by applying default factors to ACGIH workplace threshold limit values. The committee was charged with updating the process for deriving these values. Critical in this process was recognition of the need to review and revise these values by a state agency with extremely limited resources.
The panel meets monthly and is independently considering approaches for chronic exposure values for non-cancer and cancer causing agents. In addition, short-term exposure value approaches also are being considered. Given the limited resources and the availability of air pollutant exposure guidance values from the U.S. EPA (the RfCs) and California EPA (the RELs), the committee is considering reliance on their published values. Approaches being considered include adoption of the more recently derived value from these two agencies, with the rationale that the more recent value is more likely to be representative of the current state of the art. Chemical-specific reviews might only be warranted when the RfC and REL values differed greatly, perhaps by more than a factor of 3 for non-carcinogens and more than a factor of 10 for cancer-causing pollutants. Interestingly, the Committee identified only a limited number of chemicals for which this was the case. The focus of such chemical-specific reviews might be the selection of either the RfC or REL, not the independent derivation of a new guidance level. Overall, these processes might provide a cost-effective approach for derivation of the Virginia Significant Ambient Air Concentrations while minimizing duplication of effort among state and federal agencies.
The advisory group has had many lively and stimulating discussions representing a variety of views and perspectives. Nonetheless, the committee has been able to reach consensus on every issue. Given the breadth of expertise among the Society of Toxicology’s membership, we are well suited to participate in such activities. By providing their perspectives on the use of the science of toxicology to create a safer and healthier world, the participation of SOT members in such activities not only serves to enhance the public health but also to elevate the visibility of the Society.
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