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Consideration of Background Exposures in the Management of Hazardous Waste Sites: A New Approach to Risk Assessment
Author(s) -
Smith Allan H.,
Sciortino Stanley,
Goeden Helen,
Wright Catherine C.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/j.1539-6924.1996.tb00811.x
Subject(s) - risk assessment , hazardous waste , environmental health , public health , risk analysis (engineering) , risk management , health risk assessment , environmental planning , exposure assessment , population , environmental science , human health , business , engineering , medicine , waste management , computer science , computer security , nursing , finance
The current approach to health risk assessment of toxic waste sites in the U.S. may lead to considerable expenditure of resources without any meaningful reduction in population exposure. Risk assessment methods used generally ignore background exposures and consider only incremental risk estimates for maximally exposed individuals. Such risk estimates do not address true public health risks to which background exposures also contribute. The purpose of this paper is to recommend a new approach to risk assessment and risk management concerning toxic waste sites. Under this new approach, which we have called public health risk assessment, chemical substances would be classified into a level of concern based on the potential health risks associated with typical national and regional background exposures. Site assessment would then be based on the level of concern for the particular pollutants involved and the potential contribution of site contaminants to typical background human exposures. While various problems can be foreseen with this approach, the key advantage is that resources would be allocated to reduce the most important sources of human exposure, and site remediation decisions could be simplified by focussing on exposure assessment rather than questionable risk extrapolations.