Risk Assessment

Abstract

Human health risk assessment is useful to determine if an environmental condition is safe or permissible, and to determine appropriate cleanup levels. Risk assessment consists of two parts—exposure analysis and toxicity analysis (i.e., getting a chemical to the body and a chemical’s health impact once it is in the body). Exposure analysis often requires further evaluation of existing data—for example, using soil contamination data to determine volatilization and breathing zone air concentrations. Toxicity analysis typically converts the exposed concentration to a dose and then compares that dose to reference material on safe doses, such as the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) database. Risk assessment, as it is applied today on environmental problems like Superfund sites, could be improved by performing it as a risk–benefit analysis.