Health Risk Science - Exposure assessment

Exposure assessment is the process of measuring or estimating the intensity, frequency, and duration of human exposures to an agent currently present in the environment, or of estimating hypothetical exposures that might arise from the release of new chemicals into the environment.

Exposure assessments include environmental measurements (levels in air, water, soil, food, etc.) and physiological measurements (levels in blood, urine, and tissue samples), both of which provide essential information for wildlife, epidemiological, and experimental studies.

Exposure assessments can provide an accurate representation of the dose received by an individual. Although an individual may be exposed to a certain concentration of an agent, many factors will determine the effective concentration of the agent that organs, tissues and cells are actually exposed to. A chemical agent must persist in the environment long enough to interact with an organism (exposure). The biochemical properties of the agent (water solubility, sensitivity to heat, light) will determine the lifespan of an agent in the environment following its release.