Orientation to Health Risk Assessment for Practicing Engineers

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to acquaint the practicing engineer with the principles that underlie the health risk assessment process and provide an orientation to emerging techniques for dealing with the effects of contamination events. In the past decision makers were forced to rely on rudimentary methods of analysis that incorporated large safety factors to offset gaps in our knowledge base. Improvements in computational methods now allow for a more precise description of risk levels by incorporating inherent variability and uncertainty of the data into the analysis. This paper describes the elements of the risk assessment process and presents Probabilistic Health Risk Assessment (PHRA) as a tool for modeling the fate of contaminants. The common means of evaluating carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic materials are presented along with a brief discussion of the toxicological principles that underlie the methods. A guide to data sources and procedural references is provided along with suggestions of how to use PHRA in current practice.