Total exposure assessment in occupational epidemiology for risk management

Exposure assessment is an integral and essential component of occupational epidemiology necessary for risk assessment, risk management as well as for diagnostic and intervention efforts. It is a multidisciplinary approach that usually requires the combined expertise of environmental and industrial hygienists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, physicians, social scientists and statisticians. Exposure-assessment methodology employs various direct and indirect techniques, including environmental measurements, personal monitoring, biological markers, questionnaires, and mathematical modelling. Exposure assessments for occupational environment must be considered in the framework of potential contributions from other media and adding the incremental exposure from other media when necessary. Furthermore, to achieve effective risk assessment, all media and routes of exposure must be assessed for the relative magnitude of their contributions before an assessment of one medium is conducted. In the paper the concept of total human exposure assessment is introduced and measurement approaches have been discussed focusing attention on environmental research surveys.