Risk assessment is a systematic approach to assessing the potential health risks associated with exposure to known or potentially toxic agents. Risk assessments can be used in a variety of contexts, including evaluating exposure to chemicals associated with consumer products, occupational settings, or specific contaminated sites. The scope of the risk assessment can be limited to single risk estimates, typically for a highly exposed individual within a population (deterministic risk assessment), or expanded to risk estimates across the full distribution of the exposed population (i.e., probabilistic risk assessment). Exponent scientists are highly knowledgeable in methodologies and related analyses for assessing the relationship between exposure to a chemical and the likelihood of adverse health effects. These areas include mechanistic analyses of the mode of toxic action, pharmacokinetic modeling of the chemical within the body and target organ dose, endocrine disruption, biologically-based dose-response modeling, assessment of carcinogenesis, chemical structure-activity relationships, and toxicological implications of biomarker data.
