7NEW RISK ASSESSMENT INITIATIVES IN EPA

reference dose. This paper describes EPA’s recent efforts to ensure consistency and technical competence of the agency’s risk assessments. These include five risk assessment guidelines proposed in November 1984 and Janu-ary 1985 and establishment of a Risk Assessment Forum. The techni-cal provisions of the five guidelines have been outlined. The last two years have been exciting ones for development in the area of risk assessment for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Prior to this recent effort, in 1976, EPA had prepared interim risk assessment guidelines for carcinogen evaluations and published them in the Federal Register (U.S. EPA, 1976). Since that time, the EPA has had eight years of experience in doing health and exposure assessments and developing Agency-wide as well as internal risk assessment guidelines (U.S. EPA, 1976; 1980a,b; 1983), and sponsoring or participating in a series o