ABSTRACT
466Risk assessment professionals argue endlessly about how much soil people eat, if any, or whether certain groundwater sources will be used as sole sources of residential drinking water, and a host of other risk assessment exposure questions. But nobody argues about whether people breathe air. When chemicals are in the air, people are exposed. Discussion of airborne chemical risk assessment centers around modeled predictions, the toxic effects of the chemicals (especially at low doses), probabilities of accidental releases, the hazards of inhaling small particulate matter, and indirect pathways. Project managers have many opportunities to inject rationality into the air toxics risk process, regardless of their level of technical involvement. In this chapter, we will discuss the typical issues that arise in evaluating air toxics, with special emphasis on what managers should watch for, and we will discuss the general approach to risk assessment * as it applies to air toxics, including:
Developing a conceptual site model
Applying the DQO process
Using appropriate exposure and toxicity information to develop a risk characterization
