Overview of ozone human exposure and health risk analyses used in the U.S. EPA's review of the ozone air quality standard.

This paper presents an overview of the ozone human exposure and health risk analyses developed under sponsorship of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These analyses are being used in the current review of the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for ozone. The analyses consist of three principal steps: (1) estimating short-term ozone exposure for particular populations (exposure model); (2) estimating population response to exposures or concentrations (exposure-response or concentration-response models); and (3) integrating concentrations or exposure with concentration-response or exposure-response models to produce overall risk estimates (risk model). The exposure model, called the probabilistic NAAQS exposure model for ozone (pNEM/03), incorporates the following factors: hourly ambient ozone concentrations; spatial distribution of concentrations; ventilation state of individuals at time of exposure; and movement of people through various microenvironments (e.g., outdoors, indoors, inside a vehicle) of varying air quality. Exposure estimates are represented by probability distributions. Exposure-response relationships have been developed for several respiratory symptom and lung function health effects, based on the results of controlled human exposure studies. These relationships also are probabilistic and reflect uncertainties associated with sample size and variability of response among subjects. The analyses also provide estimates of excess hospital admissions in the New York City area based on results from an epidemiology study. Overall risk results for selected health endpoints and recently analyzed air quality scenarios associated with alternative 8-hour NAAQS and the current 1-hour standard for outdoor children are used to illustrate application of the methodology