Working closely with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) National Center for Environmental Health (Slide 13) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the Agency for Toxic Substances Disease Registry (ATSDR). ATSDR was created in 1983 by executive order of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), with a mission to conduct health risk assessments (RA) of hazardous waste sites, toxic emergency situations, and landfills that may pose substantial potential risks to human health.

In conducting its RA, ATSDR places a great emphasis on both the site-specific health issues and the path of exposure to a population group (U.S. DHHS, 1986). ATSDR also routinely communicates its RA results to EPA, the latter often helps set the assessment priority. Thus, in many ways, ATSDR and EPA share the same significant RA case studies. CDC also performs many of the administrative functions for ATSDR.