Pollution Exposure to Humans and Its Assessment

Background

According to the risk assessment model, harmful health effects caused by the various pollutants in the environment can be assessed. Risk assessment is the four step process involves Hazard Identification, Exposure assessment, Dose response assessment and Risk characterization process. In the first step of hazard identification of risk assessment, contaminants which are responsible for the human health hazard are identified, and their qualitative analysis with respect to the health effect is presented. After the hazard identification, consideration in the risk assessment is given to the exposure assessment and dose response assessment. In the dose response assessment, human being is exposed to the different known values of contaminant concentration and its corresponding health effect at each level is analyzed. Further, Exposure assessment for the population is carried out using various available methods and the result of that is coupled with the dose response analysis. By doing so the risk characterization to the individual can carried out. A flow diagram for the above stated process risk assessment is presented in the figure 1.

Figure 1.

Risk Assessment Model (source: EPA, 1992)

Since the exposure assessment is the integral part of the risk assessment process, measurement and modeling related with the exposure assessment becomes very essential. Exposure assessment model can predict the exposure even though few measuring data are available. These models are very useful in case where obtaining the measurement data involves very high cost.