INTRODUCTIONThis literature review of the risk assessment process addresses both ecological and human receptors. The review covers the risk assessment literature including methodology, analysis, interpretation, uncertainty, and regulatory guidance.Companion reviews in this volume that address the effect of pollutants and their fate and transport processes in the aquatic environment overlap the discipline of risk assessment and, therefore, the reader is urged to review these sections as they will not be covered in this review. The focus of the review is on the risk assessment process as it is applied to sediment and water quality, site remediation, and natural resources.
ECOLOGICAL
Problem FormulationMoore (2001) applied the Anna Karenina principle, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" to ecological risk assessments of multiple stressors. Moore states that there are few pathways to success and many ways to ruin an ecological risk assessment, and all successful assessments must achieve the following: (1) societal and political buy-in, (2) consideration of a broad range of stressors and management options, (3) focusing, models and data to characterize risk, and tools for characterizing uncertainty, (4) adoption of an adaptive management strategy, where system responses are observed, assessed and revised as necessary.As our environmental and regulatory focus shifts from managing point sources to large Literature Review 2002 23 methodology for deriving the RBC for vinyl chloride. Unlike typical RBCs, individual RBCs were derived for childhood and adult exposures to vinyl chloride due to age-based cancer slope factors that are known for vinyl chloride.References Abdel-Megeed, M.A.; Suh, D.H.; and Abdel-Rahman, M.S. (2001) Intra-species Extrapolation in Risk Assessment of Different Classes of Antimicrobials. Hum. Ecol. Risk Assess., 7, 15. Anderson, B.S.; Hunt, J.W.; Phillips, B.M.; Fairey, R.; Roberts, C.A.; Oakden, J.M.; Puckett, H.M.; Stephenson, M.; Tjeerdema, R.S.; Long. E.R.; Wilson, C.Boring, C.S.; Brisbin, I.L. Jr.; Snodgrass, J.; Peles, J.D.; Bryan, A.L.; Smith, M.H.; and Gochfeld, M. (2001b) Radiocesium in Fish from the Savannah River and Steel Creek: Potential Food Chain Exposure to the Public.
