Collection and evaluation of existing data: an ecological risk assessment perspective.

All scientific disciplines rely to some degree upon existing data to design new studies, test hypotheses, and make decisions. Because existing data can take many forms, a framework for addressing the quality of these data must be general and comprehensive. By nature of this inclusiveness, quality categories for existing data are necessarily broad. Effective employment of existing data requires the development of specific acceptance criteria from broad data quality categories. A framework is presented for collecting and evaluating existing data with examples of Environmental Protection Agency projects employing a tiered data review. The systematic planning inherent in a tiered review is described and attendant data quality considerations are developed in the context of an ecological risk assessment; specifically, the process is illustrated by defining an ecologically protective concentration of a chemical in soil.