Since
the mid 1980’s, the microcomputer
software products developed by Durango Software
have set the standard for fast, powerful,
and reliable computational tools for performing
human exposure analyses related to pesticides
in foods and in the residential environment.
DEEM (Durango
Software’s Dietary Exposure Evaluation
Model) has been used by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture,
Food and Drug Administration, Health Canada,
California EPA, and most major US and foreign
chemical companies that sell agricultural
chemicals in the U.S.
Since its inception, Durango
Software has continually upgraded the analytical
and reporting capabilities of DEEM in response
to the needs of, and feedback
from, it users. The incorporation of probabilistic
computational methods (Monte
Carlo analysis) in dietary exposure
software was
pioneered by Durango Software in the mid
1990s. The residue distribution file (RDF)
and critical exposure contribution (CEC)
report developed by Durango Software for
use with DEEM have become de facto standard
analysis requirements.
In the late 1990’s,
in response to new FQPA requirements, Durango
Software further expanded its analytical
software capabilities with the introduction
of Calendex,
the first calendar-based software package
available for aggregate and cumulative exposure
analyses of dietary and residential chemicals.
Like DEEM, the analytical capabilities of
Calendex have been significantly expanded
every year since its initial release as
risk assessors have become more experienced
with calendar-based exposure analysis. Together,
these two program packages offer the risk
assessor the broadest range of analytical
tools for exposure analysis available in
the world today, including extensive documentation
of the user’s input data, flexible
exposure modeling tools, a wide range of
computation options, and clear, concise
reports. Now that DEEM and Calendex have
been made publicly
available and use only publicly available
databases (such as the USDA
CSFII and EPA’s
FCID), these are clearly the most suitable
programs available today for public policy-making
related to the use of chemicals in foods
and in the residential environment.
