News: December 2007
Upcoming Events
SCAPA members are heavily involved in both organizing and presenting their research at the upcoming 10th Emergency Preparedness and Response Topical Meeting. Information on the meeting is available at http://cimar.mae.ufl.edu/rrsd/
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The 2008 annual EMI SIG and SCAPA meeting will be held May 5-10, 2008, at the Hyatt Regency Reston Town Center, in Reston, Virginia. The theme of the EMI SIG meeting is Elect to Perfect, focusing on achieving excellence in emergency preparedness programs while facing the challenges of change. The EMI SIG deadline for presentation proposals is January 5th. The SCAPA deadline has not yet been set, but will probably be in the March time frame.
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Prior to the start of the SCAPA meeting, SCAPA working groups will be meeting on Monday - Wednesday, May 5-7, during breaks in the EMI-SIG conference. This includes meetings of the:
- Biosafety Working Group
- Consequence Assessment Modeling Working Group
- Chemical Exposure and Chemical Mixtures Working Group
- Source Term Working Group
- TEEL Advisory Group (TAG) – (open only to TAG members).
Other meetings of potential interest will be held on Monday, May 5 (e.g., the DOE Meteorology Coordinating Council, Hazards Assessment Subcommittee).
We look forward to seeing you in the Washington DC area in May! If you need a letter from SCAPA requesting your participation in the annual meeting, please contact Cliff Glantz (SCAPA Chair) at cliff.glantz@pnl.gov (509.375.2166).News
SCAPA members have been busy since our 2007 annual meeting addressing a number of important issues. Among the key activities have been:
- Completing work on, and posting Protective Action Criteria (PAC) Rev 23 in August. The PAC data set now contains exposure limit values for more than 3,200 chemicals. Originally called the “TEEL data set,” the name of this product has been changed to the “PAC data set” to emphasize its inclusion of AEGLs and ERPGs as well as TEELs. The PAC data set is accessible from the PAC/TEEL webpage as an on-line database, an Excel workbook, and formatted PDF files. By the way, don’t feel bad if you missed PAC Rev 22. It was only around for a couple of months before being replaced by Rev 23.
- The Chemical Mixture Methodology (CMM) development team has been busy preparing an updated version of the CMM workbook and documentation. This was posted on the CMM webpage in December. It includes a number of important enhancements and corrections to both the workbook and its documentation.
- A number of SCAPA documents have been finalized including a succession planning document for PAC/TEEL/CMM development and a quality assurance document focusing on the TEEL development workbook. In addition, close to completion is a general quality assurance guidance document for PAC/TEEL- and CMM-related activities.
- A software quality assurance (SQA) guidance for consequence assessment models is nearing completion. This document will provide a guide for those consequence assessment models that are used to address safety-related applications that are not covered by the DOE Order and Guide that provide SQA requirements for safety software.
- The Biosafety working group met in Nashville, TN in early October during the 50th annual conference of the American Biological Safety Association. The working group’s chair Frank Roberto and vice-chair Dina Matz led the meeting.
- A number of SCAPA members have been involved in organizing or preparing papers for the American Nuclear Society’s 10th Emergency Preparedness and Response Topical Meeting which will be held in Albuquerque on March 9-12. This meeting is part of the 2nd International Joint Topical Meeting on Emergency Preparedness & Response and Robotics and Remote Systems.