This book explains scientific principles and methods that underlie risk assessment. The authors use a series of case histories on environmental health hazards to describe the strengths and limitations of scientific and statistical methods used in risk assessment. The book’s objective is to allow anyone interested in health risks to make more informed judgments on possible cause-effect relationships of pollutants and disease. It explains how to establish cause-effect and dose-response relationships of various pollutants and disease endpoints, how to conduct exposure assessments, and how to assess the significance of disease incidence at the population level using the basic principles of epidemiology and its statistical foundation. The importance of advances in molecular biology and our increasing understanding of molecular mechanisms of disease to reduce uncertainties in assessment is emphasized.

The choice of case studies on both toxicants and disease endpoints conveys a balanced picture of factors affecting our health over a lifetime: exposure to natural and industrial toxicants, our genetic make-up, and life-style choices. Introductions to each case study provide vivid accounts of the societal contexts in which risks were discovered. While the authors emphasize that the book’s focus is on “sound science and solid analysis,” for some cases the authors outline policy implications, such as decisions on population screening in the case of mammography and prevention of breast cancer.