Exposure Assessment

Exposure assessment is the practice of estimating current, future or past amounts of exposure to a chemical or biological agent. Since risk is the product of both toxicity and exposure (more specifically, dose), exposure assessment is a critical component of any risk assessment. Intertox professionals are experienced and skilled in the art of exposure assessment. We have conducted exposure assessments for a range of situations, including: children exposed to lead in schools via drinking water, the public and workers exposed to herbicides from spraying of roadside vegetation, consumers exposed to perchlorate in produce and milk products, and many more.

Exposure Assessment Applications

Exposure assessment is used in almost any risk assessment evaluation. Examples of projects where exposure assessment will be an important contributor include:

• Historical dose reconstruction for a specific population alleging health effects from exposure to a past chemical release to air, groundwater, or soil (e.g., a gasoline spill proximate to a residential community)
• Estimating purposeful exposure to a particular compound or constituent of a consumer product (e.g., active ingredients in pharmaceutical products)
• Estimating exposure to a contaminant in food or water (e.g., mercury in fish)
• Estimating potential future exposure to workers due to proposed changes in industrial practices (e.g., a change in the chemical formulation used in wood treatment)
• Estimating ongoing exposures from current practices in order to manage risks (e.g., estimating herbicide exposures to workers and the public from spraying roadside vegetation)

Intertox Skills and Resources Used in Exposure Assessment

• Design and performance of experiments to fill exposure data gaps
• Design and performance of sampling investigations
• Evaluating quality of existing site-specific data
• Historical land use analysis for dose reconstruction
• Identification and analysis of exposure data from peer-reviewed literature