Total Risk Integrated Methodology (TRIM)

General Information TRIM.FaTE TRIM.Expo TRIM.Risk Peer Review and Publications You are here: EPA Home Air & Radiation Technology Transfer Network F ERA TRIM - General Information



# Total Risk Integrated Methodology (TRIM) - General Information

The TRIM design includes three individual modules w hich have been the subject of peer review and publication:

The Environmental Fate, Transport, and Ecological Exposure module, TRIM.FaTE, accounts for movement of a chemical through a comprehensive system of discrete compartments (e.g., media and biota) that represent possible locations of the chemical in the physical and biological environments of the modeled ecosystem and provides an inventory, over time, of a chemical throughout the entire system. In addition to providing exposure estimates relevant to ecological risk assessment, TRIM.FaTE generates media concentrations relevant to human in gestion exposures that can be used as input to the ingestion component of the ...

... Exposure-Event

module, TRIM.Expo . In TRIM.Expo, human exposures are evaluated by tracking either randomly selected indi viduals that represent an area's population or population groups referred to as "coh orts" and their inhalation and ingestion through time and space. The inhalation co mponent is currently available. In the Risk Characterization module, TRIM.Risk, estimates of human exposures or doses are characterized with regard to potential ri sk using the corresponding exposure- or dose-response relationships. The TRIM. Risk module is also designed to characterize ecological risks from multimedia expos ures. The output from TRIM.Risk is intended to include documentation of the input data , assumptions in the analysis, and measures of uncertainty, as well as the results of risk calculations and exposure analysis. The uncertainty and variability features (e.g., sen sitivity & Monte Carlo analysis) augment TRIM's capability for performing iterative analyses. For example, the user may perform assessments varying from simple determi nistic screening analyses using conservative default parameters to refined and comp lex risk assessments where the impacts of parameter uncertainty and variability ar e assessed for critical parameters.

Given the modular design of TRIM, the user selects any one or more of the modules for an assessment depending on their needs.

For example, when performing a human health risk as sessment for an air pollutant for which multimedia distribution is not significant, i t is recommended that TRIM.Expoinhalation be applied to ambient concentration data or the output from an air quality model external to TRIM (i.e., not TRIM.FaTE). The o utput from TRIM.Expo may then be input to TRIM.Risk (when available) to perform t he desired risk analyses. In the case of a multimedia air pollutant, such as mercury, the user may choose to run all three TRIM modules (when available) to asse ss ecological risks posed by multipathway exposures from multiple media, as well as h uman ingestion risks posed by exposure from multiple pathways.

In the development of TRIM, existing models and too ls are being relied upon where possible. For example, EPA has incorporated TRIM into EPA's M IMS, a modeling framework that accommodates linkages among multiple models and the sharing of common tools and data.



## Technology Transfer Network FERA (Fate, Exposure, and Risk Analysis) http://epa.gov/ttn/fera/trim_gen.html Last updated on Wednesday, November 10, 2010 

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12/6/2011 http://epa.gov/ttn/fera/trim_gen.html