Is Epidemiology the Key to Cumulative Risk Assessment?

Jonathan I. Levy

Risk Analysis, 2008, vol. 28, issue 6, 1507-1513

Abstract: Although cumulative risk assessment by definition evaluates the joint effects of chemical and nonchemical stressors, studies to date have not considered both dimensions, in part because toxicological studies cannot capture many stressors of interest. Epidemiology can potentially include all relevant stressors, but developing and extracting the necessary information is challenging given some of the inherent limitations of epidemiology. In this article, I propose a conceptual framework within which epidemiological studies could be evaluated for their inclusion into cumulative risk assessment, including a problem formulation/planning and scoping step that focuses on stressors meaningful for risk management decisions, extension of the chemical mixtures framework to include nonchemical stressors, and formal consideration of vulnerability characteristics of the population. In the long term, broadening the applicability and informativeness of cumulative risk assessment will require enhanced communication and collaboration between epidemiologists and risk assessors, in which the structure of social and environmental epidemiological analyses may be informed in part by the needs of cumulative risk assessment.

Date: 2008
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1539-6924.2008.01121.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:riskan:v:28:y:2008:i:6:p:1507-1513

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().