Scope
1.1 Purpose—The purpose of this guide is to describe a scientific methodology for conducting environmental health site assessments (EHSAs) for military deployments. EHSAs are prepared to evaluate potential environmental exposures that may impact the health of deployed personnel as directed by Presidential Review Directive 5; Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff memorandum MCM-0006-02; and Department of Defense Instruction 6490.3. This guide is intended to assist the user in developing conceptual site models (CSMs) for deployment sites. CSMs are used to define the exposure pathways. The exposure pathways assist in the evaluation of potential health impacts. The goal of this guide is to identify complete and potentially complete exposure pathways that may affect the health of deployed personnel.
1.2 This guide provides a series of steps designed to obtain sufficient information to evaluate potential environmental exposures that may affect the health of deployed personnel. It is most applicable when only a limited amount of information about the deployment area is available. If it becomes apparent to the environmental health professional in predeployment planning activities that sufficient information exists to evaluate the health significance of potential environmental exposures, it will not be necessary to complete the data collection activities described in this process. In this event, the environmental health professional will document their justification for not completing the data collection activities. An obvious example would be deployment to a major city in a developed county.
1.3 Information generated by this process will be used for environmental health risk assessments. Environmental health risk assessments are beyond the scope of this guide.
1.4 This standard does not purport to address all of the safety concerns, if any, associated with its use. It is the responsibility of the user of this standard to establish appropriate safety and health practices and determine the applicability of regulatory requirements prior to use.
