Review of the Army's Technical Guides on Assessing and Managing Chemical Hazards to Deployed Personnel

To guide mission planning, military decision makers need information on the health risks of potential exposures to individual soldiers and their potential impact on mission operations. To help with the assessment of chemical hazards, the U.S. Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine developed three technical guides for characterizing chemicals in terms of their risks to the mission and to the health of the force. The report reviews these guides for their scientific validity and conformance with current risk-assessment practices. The report finds that the military exposure guidelines are appropriate (with some modification) for providing force health protection, but that for assessing mission risk, a new set of exposure guidelines is needed that predict concentrations at which health effects would degrade the performance of enough soldiers to hinder mission accomplishment. Table of Contents Front Matter Summary 1 Introduction 2 Review of the Army's Technical Guidance 3 Review of Key Concepts, Assumptions, and Decisions Made in Developing TG-248, TG-230, and RD-230 4 A New Set of Exposure Guidelines: Chemical Casualty Estimating Guidelines 5 Process for Establishing and Applying Military Exposure Guidelines Appendix A Errata, Inconsistencies, and Comments on Specific Aspects of TG-248, TG-230, and RD-230 Appendix B Review of Acceptable Cancer Risk Levels Appendix C Example Use of Probits for Developing Chemical Casualty Estimating Guidelines Appendix D Critical Studies and Uncertainty Factors Used in Developing Acute Exposure Guideline Levels for Chemical Warfare Agents Appendix E Probabilistic Approach to Address Exposure to Multiple Chemicals for Course-of-Action Analysis Appendix F Biographical Information on the Subcommittee on Toxicological Risks to Deployed Military Personnel Appendix G Definitions