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Facts Sheet for ProUCL 4.0 <br /> A Statistical Software Package for Environmental Applications for <br /> Data Sets With and Without Nondetect Observations <br /> Exposure assessment,risk assessment and management, and cleanup decisions at potentially <br /> polluted sites are often made based upon the mean concentrations of the contaminants of <br /> potential concern(COPCs). Typically,the mean concentration of a COPC at a contaminated site <br /> is unknown, and is frequently estimated by the sample mean based upon the data collected from <br /> the site areas under investigation. In order to address the uncertainties associated with the <br /> estimates of the unknown mean concentrations of the COPCs, appropriate 95%upper confidence <br /> limits (UCLs) of the respective unknown means are used in many environmental applications <br /> including the estimation of exposure point concentration(EPC)terms. The Technical Support <br /> Center(TSC),EPA Las Vegas,NV developed ProUCL Version 3.0 software package (EPA, <br /> 2004)to support risk assessment and cleanup decisions at contaminated sites based upon full <br /> data sets without nondetect observations (NDs). For data sets without NDs, ProUCL 3.0 has <br /> several parametric and nonparametric UCL computation methods as described in the revised <br /> EPA UCL Guidance Document for Hazardous Waste Sites(EPA, 2002a). <br /> The Need for an Upgrade of ProUCL 3.0 <br /> Nondetect observations are inevitable in most data sets collected from the various environmental <br /> applications. The ProUCL 4.0 software package is an upgrade of ProUCL 3.0 software package, <br /> and provides several statistical methods that can be used on left censored data sets with <br /> nondetect observations potentially having multiple detection limits (DLs). ProUCL 4.0 is <br /> especially developed to address the various statistical issues arising in exposure and risk <br /> assessment studies, and also in background and site evaluation and comparison applications. All <br /> capabilities of ProUCL 3.0 have been retained in ProUCL 4.0. The TSC,EPA Las Vegas has <br /> revised the Background Guidance Document for CERCLA sites (EPA, 2002b). The revised <br /> background document includes some exploratory graphical methods to pre-process a data set, <br /> and a couple of new chapters describing the computations of parametric and nonparametric <br /> upper limits that are used to estimate the background level contaminant concentrations or <br /> background threshold values (BTVs), and other not-to-exceed values based upon data sets with <br /> and without ND observations. <br /> It is noted that the methods to compute upper limits to estimate BTVs and not-to-exceed values <br /> are not easily available in any of the available software packages, especially for data sets with <br /> nondetect observations. ProUCL 4.0 can be used to compute various parametric and <br /> nonparametric upper limits often used to estimate environmental parameters of interest including <br /> the EPC terms, BTVs, and other not-to-exceed values. The BTVs and not-to-exceed values are <br /> also used for screening of contaminants of potential concern(COPCs). Typically,upper <br /> confidence limits (UCLs)are used to estimate the EPC terms; upper prediction limits (UPLs), <br /> upper tolerance limits (UTLs), or upper percentiles are used to estimate the BTVs and not-to- <br /> exceed values. ProUCL 4.0 can be used to compute those upper limits based upon full <br /> uncensored data sets without NDs and left-censored data sets with NDs having multiple DLs. <br /> Additionally, ProUCL 4.0 offers several parametric and nonparametric single sample and two <br /> sample hypotheses testing approaches used in background versus site comparison studies. Those <br /> hypotheses testing approaches can be used on data sets with NDs and without NDs. ProUCL 4. <br />