Cancer Risk Assessment and Communication

Abstract

The term “environmental cancer” is used to indicate cancers attributable to workplace exposures and involuntary exposures through water, air, and soil. Cancer risk assessment initially involves hazard identification: the specification of agents as being able to cause cancer in humans. Agents may be categorized as to whether they are known to cause cancer in humans, probably or possibly cause cancer, cannot be categorized based on current evidence, or probably not carcinogenic. Quantitative risk assessment is used to inform environmental health policy and usually involves the following four key steps hazard identification, exposure assessment, dose–response assessment, and risk characterization. Exposure assessment is primarily concerned with the distribution of exposure by assessing the length, dose, and duration of exposure as well as routes of contact (e.g., oral, inhalation). Dose-response is the measure of cancer outcomes at various levels of the exposure. Finally, risk characterization relies on the previous three aspects (hazard identification, exposure and dose-response assessment) to determine the extent and uncertainties of a populations’ risk to an agent. Further, effective communication of carcinogenic risk is fundamental to prevention of cancer consequent on environmental exposures, though remains a challenge as risk is usually presented in a numeric form that is not interpretable to most individuals.