Dr. William Rish, ToxStrategies’ Principal Engineer, was invited to present to an ad hoc committee assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) that convened state of the science workshops and is developing a consensus report to advise the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on developing the scientific foundation for cumulative impact assessment (CIA). CIA can help scientists and communities understand the impacts of environmental stressors on vulnerable groups and provide a scientific basis to help guide decision making. NASEM recently published a brief on the results of the workshop in State of the Science and the Future of Cumulative Impact Assessment: Proceedings of a Workshop–in Brief, which summarizes the presentations and discussions.
The brief includes a summary of Dr. Rish’s discussion from the workshop about tools, methods, and data for CIA. He reported that in a recent comprehensive review project, the ToxStrategies’ team found that no quantitative models completely combine impacts across all domains, chemical and non-chemical. CIAs are multidisciplinary and for now will rely on quantitative and qualitative approaches. However, Dr. Rish noted that effects-based strength of association approaches can help determine action to improve community health in the near term while waiting for more scientific evidence and clarity. He also emphasized prioritizing local data collection and integrating insights from community experts, remarking, “I do not really feel like cumulative impact assessment’s primary role is to demonstrate that there are inequities—we know there are inequities. It is to actually identify ways to improve community health from multiple perspectives.”