What is risk?
Risk can most easily be thought of as the probability of an undesirable event occurring.
What is health risk assessment?
The chance that an undesirable health event may occur is estimated through a process called a Health Risk Assessment. This is a formal, science-based process for objectively determining the chance of an adverse effect occurring at certain exposure levels. In the case of crop protection chemicals , risk assessment combines the toxicological properties of a pesticide with information on the use patterns, exposure opportunity and environmental fate of the pesticide to determine the degree to which estimated exposures may exceed--or not--a level of toxicological concern.
In other words, Health Risk Assessment uses real-world information to answer the questions
- In what manner are humans and the environment exposed to a substance?
- What is the degree of exposure to a given substance?
- Are there any unreasonable risks associated with that exposure?
Risk assessments require large amounts of data analysis, and it is also very important that the sources of data going into a risk assessment be collected using sound scientific principles.
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