Dr. Robert Pastorok was invited to speak on “Developments in Population-Level Ecological Risk Assessment in the U.S.” at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, Japan in September 2008. AIST is the premier technical research institute in Japan and includes the Research Institute of Science for Safety and Sustainability. Dr. Pastorok participated in a mini-symposium along with Dr. Bin-Le Lin and her colleagues at AIST, as well as scientists from Japan’s National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences and the National Institute of Environmental Sciences.
In his presentation, Dr. Pastorok reviewed recent activities by U.S. federal and state environmental agencies to develop methods for population-level ecological risk assessment, particularly population modeling. He also introduced a framework for tiered population modeling in the context of pesticide risk assessment. Other researchers at the meeting reviewed their work on environmental risk assessment of biofuels for Japan, risk tradeoff analysis methods, population-level ecological risk assessment of alcohol ethoxylate, and population-level ecological risk assessment of zinc, including developing water quality criteria.
For more information, contact rpastorok@integral-corp.com, visit the AIST web site at http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/about_aist/index.html or visit EPA’s web site describing related topics at http://www.epa.gov/NHEERL/ontheroad/crystal_city_va.html