An evaluation of the US Environmental Protection Agency definition of a risk assessment

Abstract

A full presentation of relevant information, including both non-adverse and beneficial effects, of chemicals is important to developing sound and balanced risk assessments. Such considerations are not new. For example, the American Thoracic Society has developed criteria for defining adverse and non-adverse pulmonary effects. Failing to allow risk assessors to even consider non-adverse and beneficial effects will discourage the use of information from developing technologies, such as genomics, and from new understandings of dose-response relationships, as reflected in the hormetic model. Failing to provide such information to risk managers potentially provides a biased perspective on risk.