Environmental Health Risk Assessment
Environmental Health Risk Assessment is the multidisciplinary field of environmental health practice that is focused around the methods used to evaluate exposure, predict health risks and outcomes. The Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM) has an assignment to provide authorities in Sweden and EC with expertise, support and advice regarding environmental health risk assessments. IMM is also cooperating with other expert organizations like WHO (World health organization) and EC expert groups.
The purpose with environmental health risk assessments is usually to define safety levels of exposure in form of recommended health based values. Environmental health risk assessment is mainly an analytical process based on
- toxilogical data
- epidemiological data
- exposure base.
IMM performs health risk assessment of different chemical and physical environmental factors. For example IMM has compiled health based recommendations for environmental pollution and produced scientific basic data on urgent environmental problems.
To be able to attain the best results health risk assessment assignments are usually a joint effort with experts from different parts of IMM. High quality risk assessments require close collaboration with researchers and their work.
At IMM, a secretariat for risk assessment handles requests and assignments from national authorities. The secretariat also coordinates more extensive national and international health risk assessment projects.