Quantitative risk assessment of environmental hazards
Quantitative risk assessment may never become a rigorous scientific discipline because of the inherent difficulties in working with highly uncertain and often controversial data and methods, and because the predictions of risk assessment may not be subject to validation in their most important areas of application. However, the potential benefits of having quantitative estimates of risk may make quantitative risk assessment a valuable adjunct to traditional methods for making individual and social decisions about health hazards in the home, workplace, and general environment. Risk assessment, which is the process of estimating risks to populations exposed to hazardous agents or activities, must be distinguished from risk management, which is the process of forming and implementing a strategy for accepting or abating the risks. To the extent possible, these two processes should be kept separate. Quantitative risk assessment is in principle capable of estimating individual or lifetime excesses of specific health effects from exposures to a specified hazard. These excesses may be estimated on an absolute basis or expressed as a relative risk in comparison with the baseline risk that would exist without exposure. An individual risk is usually expressed in terms of the probability of developing the health effect in some time period following a specified exposure, whereas a population risk is the overall number of effects expected in a defined population with a defined distribution of exposure levels and patterns. The variation of risk with time after exposure may imply a constant absolute risk, a constant relative risk, or some other dependence on time, usually after a minimal latent period has elapsed. Risk estimates can rarely be made directly from observed human data, and models for extrapolating or projecting risk estimates from the conditions of observation to the actual conditions of exposure must be used.
- OSTI ID:
- 6240623
- Journal Information:
- Annu. Rev. Public Health; (United States), Vol. 6
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
RISK ASSESSMENT
EVALUATION
AIR POLLUTION
ASBESTOS
DOSE-RESPONSE RELATIONSHIPS
HUMAN POPULATIONS
LATENCY PERIOD
MAXIMUM PERMISSIBLE EXPOSURE
NEOPLASMS
PUBLIC HEALTH
RADIOINDUCTION
TIME DEPENDENCE
WATER POLLUTION
DISEASES
POLLUTION
POPULATIONS
SAFETY STANDARDS
STANDARDS
560300* - Chemicals Metabolism & Toxicology