Human health risk assessments are an important tool used to quantitatively estimate the potential for adverse health effects from chemical or microbial exposures. Intertox specializes in preparing risk assessments for a variety of situations where chemical or microbial exposure is a concern, including industrial activities, accidental releases, and consumer exposures.
The primary objective of the risk assessment process is to develop a clear understanding of potential risks, including identifying chemicals of interest, characterizing potential routes of exposure, and identifying potentially sensitive population groups in order to support informed decision-making.
Risk assessments provide valuable information that may be used to respond to citizen action groups concerned over potential impacts to the community, quantify the risks associated with site development or proposed action (such as a contaminated site cleanup), or develop adequate protective standards for human health and ecological impacts.
Our human health risk assessment services include:
- Single-pathway, screening level, and multipathway risk assessments for chemicals and/or microbial contaminants in air, water, soil, food, and consumer products.
- Intensive investigation and characterization of the state-of-knowledge regarding the toxicity of chemical and microbial agents.
- Experimental design of site sampling programs, as well as animal toxicity and human clinical studies of chemical exposure.
- Field sampling to assess chemical and microbial exposures, as well as to characterize the chemical constituents of odors.
- Fate and transport modeling of chemicals and microbes.
- Use of probabilistic (Monte Carlo) methods to characterize the uncertainty and variability in exposure and risk estimates.
- Quality control and quality assurance of laboratory data.
- Determination of action levels to support contaminated site remediation or establishment of “safe” levels of exposure in a variety of media.
- Litigation support.
Intertox has the capability of employing computer based models relating chemical structure to both qualitative (Structure Activity Relationship) biological activity and quantitative (QSAR) biological potency. Model results are aimed toward predicting and characterizing potential chemical toxicities.