摘要：
Over the past three decades, a formal risk assessment process has
been developed to provide consistent and transparent methods for
the assessment of potential human health risks from exposure to
environmental chemicals. Given a focus on risk to human health,
epidemiological studies that identify associations between exposure
to environmental chemicals and adverse health effects in humans
have the potential to provide critically important information to
this process. For many chemicals, however, available epidemiology
studies have been found to have limited utility in informing human
health risk assessments. In order to investigate this paradox, we
have used several case examples to explore the utility of various
types of epidemiological data in informing key elements of the risk
assessment process (hazard identification, exposure-response assessment,
and exposure assessment). Examples from the epidemiologic literature
on environmental chemicals are used to illustrate the issues that
arise in using available studies for various types of chemical risk
assessments. The case examples illustrate several advantages in
using epidemiology data, but also identify a number of barriers
to its use, frequently related to limitations in exposure assessment.
The examples also highlight ways in which the utility of both toxicology
and epidemiology data can be enhanced by considering the data in
combination, and integrating the results across study categories.
Recent scientific developments offer hope for improving the utility
of both types of data, and thus enhancing the reliability of future
risk assessment efforts.
