California’s Emerging Environmental Challenges: A Workshop to Identify Future Issues for Cal/EPA (Held June 25-26, 1998)

The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) sponsored a two-day workshop entitled, "California’s Emerging Environmental Challenges: A Workshop to Identify Future Issues for Cal/EPA," on June 25 and 26, at the Radisson Hotel in Sacramento. The workshop was attended by about 100 participants, representing State, local and federal government, consulting groups, academia, industry, and environmental groups.

The workshop was the beginning of the information gathering step in a process to identify, select and characterize future environmental issues for Cal/EPA. The goal was to "harvest" as many ideas as possible about emerging environmental challenges from a diverse collection of environmental professionals.

Distinguished speakers presented their ideas about future environmental challenges which may arise in five to ten years relating to areas such as technology (agricultural, energy, and transportation technologies, as well as new technologies, in general), non-point source pollution, multimedia exposures, integrated exposure analyses, chemical mixtures assessments, exotic organisms, and resource sustainability. Workshop participants were then asked to generate and present their own ideas about future challenges during break-out sessions. All ideas contributed by workshop participants were made part of the record of the workshop. Workshop proceedings were published in February 1999.

This workshop generated a rich pool of (over 250) ideas about possible future challenges. While the output of this workshop was intended as input into a more comprehensive process for looking at future environmental issues, the ideas are valuable in themselves, and will be considered in formulating plans to help Cal/EPA be better prepared for the future.

Some of the major themes from the workshop include:

Unintended consequences and their environmental impacts need to be thoroughly examined. Often, new chemicals and new technologies are introduced without a thorough examination of the potential consequences of their use. Prior to their introduction into the market, the focus of efforts to evaluate these new chemicals and technologies is usually only on the desired purpose or application. New chemicals and new technologies can provide solutions to existing environmental problems, but at least as much attention should be given to their potential to cause harm.

Increasingly complex environmental issues require innovative, collaborative approaches. The environmental issues of today and of the future will require moving away from the traditional command-and-control regulatory model in which jurisdictions are compartmentalized in a number of agencies at different levels of government. New approaches, such as industrial ecology, generational pollution penalties (i.e., where the size of the penalty is based upon the number of generations the pollution is anticipated to affect), results-based environmental management, and others, are available and should be explored as alternatives to existing approaches. Regulatory agencies, working in collaboration with each other, with the industries they regulate, with the public, and with academia, need to view environmental challenges with a holistic, multimedia perspective. Communication of environmental information between and among these entities needs to be improved.

Effective environmental protection will require good characterization of the sources of environmental pollution. Efforts will need to be directed toward identifying and characterizing activities, operations and products that produce environmental pollution, in order to formulate effective control measures. Particular attention should be given to unregulated sources such as consumer products, fertilizers, home use pesticides, and even the human body (e.g., drug metabolites in urine)!

The consequences of California’s projected population growth will undoubtedly impact environmental quality. The State’s population is projected to grow from the current 32 million to almost 35 million by the year 2000, and 41 million by 2010. This growth will be accompanied by economic expansion. There will be increased demands on California’s resources, and increased stresses on California’s environment. Residential developments will need to built closer to agricultural lands to accommodate the growing population.

While new scientific understanding will improve the outputs of risk assessment, use of the information generated by risk assessments will likely involve more complicated decision-making in risk management. More scientific data will become available to elucidate the mechanisms which mediate toxic responses in humans (e.g., the genetic basis of susceptibility to environmental contaminants; environmental modulators of gene activity; and toxicological interactions in multi-chemical exposures). New tools and data (e.g., for determining the contribution of indoor air exposures to total exposures and for quantifying an individual’s exposure levels to an environmental contaminant) will also enable better quantification and characterization of exposures. With more information available about risks, risk management will involve more complex decisions regarding how to control exposures to adequately protect populations (or subpopulations).

OEHHA staff have organized the ideas collected at the workshop, and completed a preliminary screening and scoring process to identify those issues which appear to warrant further attention.

Proceedings of the workshop are available here.

California’s Emerging Environmental Challenges:
A Workshop to Identify Future Issues for Cal/EPA

(June 25-26, 1998)

AGENDA

THURSDAY, June 25, 1998

8:30 - 8:40 WELCOME/OVERVIEW OF CAL/EPA
Ken Selover, Cal/EPA Office of the Secretary

8:40 - 8:55 OEHHA’S EMERGING ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES PROGRAM
Joan Denton, Ph.D., Director
Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment

8:55 - 9:30 AN INTRODUCTION TO FUTURES STUDIES
Peter Bishop, Ph.D., University of Houston at Clear Lake

9:30 - 9:55 KEYNOTE: THE USE OF FORESIGHT IN
ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMS
Genevieve Matanoski, M.D., Dr.P.H., Johns Hopkins University

9:55 - 10:10 BREAK

Session I: Environmental impacts of new technologies

This session focused on newly introduced technologies, those which are currently under development, and those which are anticipated to arise in the near future, and explore their possible impacts on the environment.

10:10 - 10:15 INTRODUCTION

10:15 - 10:35 OVERVIEW OF FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES
Wendy Schultz, Ph.D., University of Houston at Clear Lake

10:35 - 10:55 FUTURE ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES
Terry Surles, Ph.D., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

10:55 - 11:15 FUTURE TRANSPORTATION TECHNOLOGIES
Daniel Sperling, Ph.D., UC Davis, Institute of Transportation Studies

11:15 - 11:35 THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES
AND THE ENVIRONMENT
David Zilberman, Ph.D., UC Berkeley, Center for Sustainable Resource Development

11:35 - 11:55 DISCUSSION

11:55 - 1:05 LUNCH

Session II: Sources, releases and transformations of chemicals

This session examined possible future challenges associated with currently overlooked or future sources of chemical releases, how and where these chemicals are released, and the fate of these chemicals following their release.

1:05 -1:10 INTRODUCTION

1:10 - 1:40 POLLUTANTS DISTRIBUTION IN A DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT:
A MULTIMEDIA PERSPECTIVE
Yoram Cohen, Ph.D., UCLA Center for Environmental Risk Reduction

1:40 - 2:00 THE UNFINISHED AGENDA: NON-POINT SOURCE POLLUTION
Terry Young, Ph.D., Environmental Defense Fund

2:00 - 2:20 DISCUSSION

2:20 - 2:25 INSTRUCTIONS FOR BREAK-OUT SESSIONS

2:25 - 2:40 BREAK

2:40 - 4:10 BREAK-OUT GROUP DISCUSSIONS, SESSIONS I AND II CONCURRENT

4:10 - 4:15 BREAK

4:15 - 4:30 POST AND VIEW RESULTS OF BREAK-OUT SESSIONS

4:30 - 5:00 PLENARY DISCUSSION

 

FRIDAY, June 26, 1998

Session III: Multi-media, multi-chemical exposures and risks

Under this session, future issues relating to assessing exposures to, and estimating risks from, chemicals in the environment were explored.

9:00 - 9:05 INTRODUCTION

9:05 - 9:25 CHALLENGES IN INTEGRATED HUMAN EXPOSURE ANALYSIS
Joan Daisey, Ph.D., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

9:25 - 9:45 SYNERGISM, ANTAGONISM
AND OTHER TOXICOLOGIC INTERACTIONS
William Farland, Ph.D.,
National Center for Environmental Assessment, USEPA

9:45 - 10:05 ESTROGENS IN THE ENVIRONMENT
Ronald Melnick, Ph.D., Environmental Toxicology Program, NIEHS

10:05 - 10:25 DISCUSSION

10:25 - 10:40 BREAK

Session IV: Resource management and resource sustainability

This session addressed current and future resource management practices, describe their potential impacts on California's environmental resources, and explore concepts that will help sustain those resources for the future.

10:40 - 10:45 INTRODUCTION

10:45 - 11:05 INTEGRATED APPROACHES TO RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
William Shireman, Global Futures

11:05 - 11:25 EXOTIC ORGANISMS
Andrew Cohen, Ph.D., San Francisco Estuary Institute

11:25 - 11:45 WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT:
CHANGING ISSUES, PROCESS AND EXPECTATIONS
D. Peter Loucks, Ph.D., Cornell University

11:45 - 12:05 DISCUSSION

12:05 - 1:15 LUNCH

1:15 - 2:45 BREAK-OUT GROUP DISCUSSIONS

2:45 - 3:00 BREAK

3:00 - 3:15 POST AND VIEW RESULTS OF BREAK-OUT SESSIONS

3:15 - 3:45 PLENARY DISCUSSION

3:45 - 3:50 WRAP-UP

3:50 - 4:00 CLOSING REMARKS
Joan Denton, Ph.D., Director, Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment