Objectives The occurrence of tap-water shutdown event, which was frequent in recent years in China, had serious impact on the safety of water supply, and had great trouble to public life and social order. In light of the limiting value of pollutants in the Standards for Drinking Water Quality(GB 5749-2006)was based on the assessment of health risk exposure to contaminants in drinking water in the lifetime, the point of view on assessing the health risk of acute exposure to contaminants in drinking water during emergent events was different. Thus, a research on the method of deriving a advisory value for the health risk of acute exposure to contaminants in drinking water was carried out.

Methods Main steps of deriving advisory values for health risk in acute exposure to contaminants in drinking water included collection and selection of toxicological data, determination of departure points, selection of uncertainty factors and derivation of health risk advisory value.

Results The health risk advisory value of acute exposure to contaminants in drinking water was derived from the following equation \rmHA = \frac\rmPOD \times \rmBW\rmUF \times \rmDWI.

Conclusions The method of deriving health risk advisory values for acute exposure to contaminants in drinking water was put forward in this study, which provided technical support in improving health risk assessment system for assessing health risk and emergent treatment of drinking water pollution events in China.