On October 27, 2021, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested public nominations of scientific experts to consider for service as ad hoc reviewers assisting the Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals (SACC) with two peer review topics anticipated for early 2022: the draft EPA Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Systematic Review Protocol and the draft EPA TSCA Screening Level Approach for Assessing Ambient Air and Water Exposures to Fenceline Communities. 86 Fed. Reg. 59382. EPA states that individuals nominated should have expertise in one or more of the following areas:
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Systematic review: Individuals nominated for peer review of the draft systematic review protocol should have expertise in one or more of the following areas: systematic review approaches of human health and ecological hazard, exposure topics, and fate. All experts, including those representing other fields of interest, who have experience with engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence techniques, and natural language processing approaches as applied to systematic review are also needed. EPA states that understanding the TSCA risk evaluation process “is highly desirable for the context of this peer review.”
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Exposures to fenceline communities: Individuals nominated for peer review of the draft EPA TSCA Screening Level Approach for Assessing Ambient Air and Water Exposures to Fenceline Communities should have expertise in one or more of the following areas: chemical fate and transport via ambient air and water pathways; atmospheric modeling of fate, transport, and human exposures; human health, exposure, and risk assessment for airborne and/or waterborne chemicals; expertise estimating environmental air releases of chemicals from a variety of sources and databases such as Chemical Data Reporting (CDR); experience developing air dispersion methodologies and/or models to estimate ambient air concentrations and impacts to human populations; expertise estimating environmental water releases of chemicals from a variety of sources and databases such as CDR, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), and Discharge Monitoring Report; experience developing methodologies and/or models to estimate chemical concentrations in ambient/source/drinking water and impacts to human populations; and public health protection for at-risk communities.
EPA states that any interested person or organization may nominate qualified individuals to be considered prospective candidates for these reviews. Individuals may also self-nominate. Nominations are due November 17, 2021.