Housatonic River Rest of River Ecological Risk Assessment Review Panel Comment Submission Form, 1 29 04,

Valery Forbes 1 Housatonic River Rest of River Ecological Risk Assessment Review Panel Comment 2 Submission Form – Final Comments 3 4 Name of Panel Member: Valery Forbes 5 Date: 29 January 2004 6 7 Executive Summary - Overall Recommendations for Improving the Risk 8 Assessment 9 10 1. The assessment endpoints should be redefined so that they are more consistent with 11 general EPA practice and so that they more accurately reflect the protection goals that 12 were actually used in this ecological risk assessment (i.e., long-term persistence of 13 local receptor populations). 14 15 2. More transparency and consistency is needed in describing the WOE approach. 16 Describing the process, or parts of it, using the phrase ‘best professional judgement’ 17 should be avoided. More care should be taken in combining lines of evidence that are 18 not independent. The WOE summary tables should be modified so that they are more 19 self-explanatory and less ambiguous. 20 21 3. More detailed and consistent descriptions of the statistical methods used should be 22 provided in those parts of the ERA where data are presented (the reader should not be 23 referred to the original article to find out what kind of statistical test was used). Both 24 statistical significance and effect size should be reported and considered in the risk 25 characterization. 26 27 4. Interpretation of HQ results needs to be refined. Both the magnitude of the maximum 28 HQ as well ...