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Title: An integrated framework for health and ecological risk assessment

Journal Article · · Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3]
  1. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 26 W. Martin L. King Drive, MC-A130, Cincinnati, OH 45268 (United States)
  2. National Institute of Public Health and the Environment (Netherlands)
  3. Tokushima University (Japan)

The worldHealth Organization's (WHO's) International Program for Chemical Safety has developed a framework for performing risk assessments that integrate the assessment of risks to human health and risks to nonhuman organisms and ecosystems. The WHO's framework recognizes that stakeholders and risk managers have their own processes that are parallel to the scientific process of risk assessment and may interact with the risk assessment at various points, depending on the context. Integration of health and ecology provides consistent expressions of assessment results, incorporates the interdependence of humans and the environment, uses sentinel organisms, and improves the efficiency and quality of assessments relative to independent human health and ecological risk assessments. The advantage of the framework to toxicologists lies in the opportunity to use understanding of toxicokinetics and toxicodynamics to inform the integrated assessment of all exposed species.

OSTI ID:
20721967
Journal Information:
Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, Vol. 207, Issue 2,suppl.1; Conference: ICT X 2004: 10. international congress of toxicology: Living in a safe chemical world, Tampere (Finland), 11-15 Jul 2004; Other Information: DOI: 10.1016/j.taap.2005.01.051; PII: S0041-008X(05)00329-7; Copyright (c) 2005 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0041-008X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English