Comparison of water quality criteria and health advisories for 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has recently recommended health advisories (HAs) for 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT). The purpose of this brief article is to present these values so that the reader can compare them with the water quality criteria that have been proposed in another article (M. G. Ryon and R. H. Ross, 1990, Regul. Toxicol. Pharmacol. 11, 104-113). In that article, a water quality criterion of 140 micrograms/liter for TNT in drinking water was proposed, and in the present article the methodology by which USEPA calculated a lifetime HA of 2 micrograms/liter is presented. The reasons why the water quality criterion and the HA differ are discussed.