Decision making, consequence-only, risk assessment

Consequently, this document is intended not only for those who carry out the assessments, the exposure assessors, but also for those who incorporate the results into the assessment of risk, the risk assessors, and those who must rely on the final results to make decisions, the risk managers. The introduction of vocabulary and criteria is intended to facilitate communication between these groups or, in the case where one person performs one or more of these roles, to facilitate a more comprehensive thought process. It is hoped that these hallmarks of data quality can be incorporated early on in the development of exposure assessments and can allow risk assessors and risk managers to more quickly and clearly identify aspects of assessments that need more work or further justification. 

A key element in decision making will be to understand the relationship between the level of chemical exposure and the consequent risks to health or the environment. There are two main ways in which we can understand this relationship through the species sensitivity distribution (SSD) or the dose-response curve. The SSD is perhaps the more useful for environmental assessment because it integrates all species, whereas the dose response describes the cause-effect relationship for only one species. Nevertheless, the dose-response relationship could be a valuable tool for environmental assessment when the species described is either particularly sensitive,... 

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