Abstract
It is desirable for the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration emergency preparedness and response community to have available every resource to enhance its capabilities for assessing the health effects of environmental agents. Such resources will aid DOE/NNSA in achieving its goal of protecting the health and safety of workers, the public, and environment in event of the release of radiological, chemical, or biological agents into the environment. Studies are reported in this paper where composite data analyses were done for the chemicals included in DOE's Protective Action Criteria (PACs) database. PACs define the concentration of airborne chemicals at which protective actions are required. They are used by DOE/NNSA in developing Emergency Preparedness Procedures and for Operational Emergencies. Data analyses were conducted to discern structure-activity relationship patterns among PAC chemicals by assigned classification schemes based on the 30 accepted categories used by the EPA Gene-Tox Program. PAC chemicals were scored according to their frequency of distribution, severity of toxicity index, and structural classification. These studies yielded results that could be helpful in assessing the toxicity of new chemicals. It is suggested that provisions be made to include chemical structural information in the PAC database.