&EPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of Water
4304T
EPA-822-F-02-001
November 2002
Fact Sheet
Revision of National Recommended Water Quality Criteria: 2002
Summary
EPA has revised its national recommended water quality criteria for 83 chemical criteria to
protect human health. These updated criteria supercede any published in EPA's previous
criteria compilations including the "Blue Book," "Red Book," "Gold Book" and EPA's last
compilation published in April 1999.
Background
The Clean Water Act (CWA) requires EPA to
publish and periodically update ambient
water quality criteria. These criteria are
intended to ". . . accurately reflect the latest
scientific knowledge ... on the kind and
extent of all identifiable effects on health and
welfare including, but not limited to, plankton,
fish, shellfish, wildlife, plant life . . . which may
be expected from the presence of pollutants
in any body of water. . ."
Water quality criteria developed under
section 304(a) of the Clean Water Act are
based solely on data and scientific judgments
on the relationship between pollutant
concentrations and environmental and
human health effects. EPA's national
recommended water quality criteria are
guidance for states and tribes in adopting
water quality standards under section 303(c)
of the CWA. These water quality criteria are
not regulations and do not impose legally
binding requirements on EPA, states,
authorized tribes or the public.
The revised national recommended water
quality criteria may, however, be superceded
by the publication of 304(a) criteria after the
publication of this update.
What's new in the updated
compilation?
The 83 revised human health criteria have
been recalculated based on EPA's new
methodology entitled, Methodology for
Deriving Ambient Water Quality Criteria for
the Protection of Human Health (2000) (EPA-
822-B-00-004). This is a partial update
based on a comprehensive revision of
components of the 304(a) criteria. Partial
updates represent a way of increasing the
frequency of scientific improvements to the
nationally recommended criteria. The revised
human health criteria specifically integrate
the new fish consumption rate of 17.5
grams/day, relative source contribution (RSC)
factors obtained from primary drinking water
standards, and any new cancer potency
factors (q1*s) or reference doses (RfDs) in
the Agency's Integrated Risk Information
System (IRIS).
The criteria do not incorporate bioaccumu-
lation factors (BAFs), a component of the
new methodology. Rather, the criteria rely on
bioconcentration factors (BCFs). EPA
intends to focus resources on developing
BAFs for pollutants that the Agency considers
of high priority and national importance, due
to the comparative complexity of developing
this component. The revised human health
criteria are more stringent than those
previously published, however, they are
consistent with the criteria updates in the
recently published compilation.
EPA is separately publishing partial updates
for 15 criteria in the Federal Register
because the revisions significantly change
the numerical values. EPA will accept
scientific views on these 15 criteria. This is
consistent with the process for publishing
criteria previously described in the April 1999
compilation.
Additional Information
EPA's updated national recommended water
quality criteria compilation, including the 83
revisions, is available in a report, National
Recommended Water Quality Criteria: 2002
(EPA-822-R-02-047). You can find it on the
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Internet at
http://epa.gov/waterscience/criteria/wqcriteria.html
For additional information about EPA's
compilation of national recommended water
quality criteria, contact:
Cindy Roberts
Health and Ecological Criteria Div. (4304T)
1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460
(202)566-1124
Roberts.Cindy@epa.gov
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