U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Reduce health and environmental risks from hazardous sites — EH‑05 Data Methodology and Measurement

On this page:  About the National Data  |  Methodology  |  History

About the National Data

Data

Data Source:  Superfund Enterprise Management System (SEMS), EPA

Baseline: 83.8 percent of Superfund Environmental Indicator sites where human exposure is known to be under control in 2018

Target: 87.3 percent

Numerator
Number of Superfund sites where human exposure to contamination is under control.
Denominator
Number of Superfund facilities and sites, including sites with insufficient data.
Target-setting method
Percentage point improvement
Target-setting method details
Percentage point improvement from the baseline using Cohen's h effect size of 0.10.
1
Target-setting method justification
Trend data were not available for this objective. A percentage point improvement was calculated using Cohen's h effect size of 0.1. This method was used because the Healthy People 2030 Workgroup Subject Matter Experts viewed this as a challenging yet achievable target.

Methodology

Methodology notes

EPA staff complete a flow chart and questionnaire based on data and conclusions from Superfund documents such as Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Studies (RI/FS) reports, Records of Decision (RODs), Action Memoranda, POLREPS, Remedial Action (RA) Reports, Close Out Reports, Five-Year Reviews, Deletion Notices, etc., which are known and reliable sources of information. EPA staff document these sources of information used to make the evaluation in SEMS. The data is compiled for the EPA's Report on the Environment (ROE) by EPA's Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, who collects the following information on each site:

  1. Contaminant concentrations in media (e.g., air, water, land, sediment, biota)
  2. Site-specific observations regarding human exposure via exposure pathways
  3. Findings from human health risk assessments

It is indicated whether there are complete exposure pathways between contaminated media and current human receptors (exposure assessment) and, if so, whether the complete exposure pathways represent unacceptable risk (risk characterization).

EPA tracks exposure indicators at each Superfund site. These indicators are classified into three categories:

  1. Current human exposures not under control
  2. Current human exposures under control
  3. Insufficient data

The third category covers sites that have been classified as having "insufficient data" to make a determination.

For more information see Superfund Remedial Performance Measures.

https://www.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-remedial-performance-measures

History

Comparable HP2020 objective
Modified, which includes core objectives that are continuing from Healthy People 2020 but underwent a change in measurement.
Changes between HP2020 and HP2030
This objective differs from the Healthy People 2020 objective EH-9 in that the EH-9 objective measured the number of sites deleted from the 2010 National Priority List, while this objective measures the percent of Superfund Environmental Indicator Sites where human exposure is known to be under control.

1. Effect size h=0.1 was chosen to correspond with 10% improvement from a baseline of 50%.