Chapter 31 – Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is the systematic analysis of scientific data to characterize potential adverse health effects resulting from human exposure to hazardous agents or situations. Classical risk assessment is composed of four major components, including hazard identification, dose–response evaluation, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. This assessment relies on a wide variety of data sources of both a qualitative and a quantitative nature. Classical default-based risk assessment is evolving into a science-based risk assessment process that more fully utilizes mechanistic data. The integrative analysis of toxicogenomic-derived data into this process has favorably impacted the risk assessment landscape.