Uncertainty in the Risk Assessment of Environmental and Occupational Hazards: An International Workshop

by A. John Bailer (Editor)

Risk is the probability that something harmful may happen. This volume focuses on the necessity to assess risks as they occur in the living environment and in the work place, as a means toward managing them, since we cannot completely avoid them. Uncertainty in large and numerous amounts is considered in the four phases of the risk assessment process: identification, exposure assessment, dose-response modeling and risk characterization, and communication.

These papers are devoted to improving understanding of the sources and magnitude of uncertainty in the risk assessment process; discussing and disseminating means of reducing the uncertainty in risk assessment; and describing and expressing uncertainty as a factor in risk assessment, with particular emphasis on the implications for risk management and other policy decisions. The results of these studies are significant in rethinking, reappraising, and relearning the ways to approach primary prevention in major diseases like cancer, where exposure to carcinogens in the environment is often common to those who have the disease.

377 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999