Science Advisors Ponder New IRIS Skin Cancer Risk Value In BaP Analysis

摘要

Experts reviewing EPA's draft assessment of the human health risks of benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) are struggling to determine how best to advise the agency on the first-time dermal cancer risk toxicity value EPA calculated for the petroleum chemical, even as agency managers are planning to soon move to apply the analysis to a broader effort to assess numerous chemicals in its class. EPA's Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) BaP assessment for the first time presents a cancer risk estimate for dermal exposure. It is also novel because the agency plans to use the finalized BaP risk numbers in an approach to estimate the human cancer risk of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) as a class of chemicals. EPA sources say the agency plans to send a revised version of the PAH approach, known as the relative potency factor approach, to peer review later this year after tabling the document for a few years following a critical 2010 peer review that urged the agency to finalize the BaP assessment first.