Quantitative risk assessment methods for cancer and noncancer effects

Human health risk assessments have evolved from the more qualitative approaches to more quantitative approaches in the past decade. This has been facilitated by the improvement in computer hardware and software capability and novel computational approaches being slowly recognized by regulatory agencies. These events have helped reduce the reliance on experimental animals as well as better utilization of published animal toxicology data in deriving quantitative toxicity indices that may be useful for risk management purposes. This chapter briefly describes some of the approaches as described in the guidance documents from several of the regulatory agencies as it pertains to hazard identification and dose-response assessment of a chemical. These approaches are contrasted with more novel computational approaches that provide a better grasp of the uncertainty often associated with chemical risk assessments.