ABSTRACT
Generally, the emphasis of the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program to date has been on total pounds of releases, not on the toxicity of those releases. This chapter develops a single toxicity factor (TF) for the chemicals in the TRI inventory, which would be useful in ranking chemicals by their potential toxic impact. The purpose of the TF would be to evaluate the relative toxic impacts of the annual total release of a chemical. Toxicity values represent either acute or chronic impacts. Acute toxicity is the measure of how a single or short-term dose of a compound can cause death or other major impact. Chronic toxicity is the result of long-term ingestion or inhalation of a much smaller dose of the chemical. There are four measures of chronic toxicity used in our analysis, based on method of exposure and associated effect: Ingestion carcinogenicity, Inhalation carcinogenicity, Ingestion noncarcinogenic toxicity and Inhalation noncarcinogenic toxicity.
