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192199 
Technical Report 
EPA Report 
An examination of EPA risk assessment principles and practices 
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency :: U.S. EPA 
2004 
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Science Advisor 
Washington, DC 
EPA/100/B-04/001 
193 
English 
The most common basic definition of risk assessment used within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is paraphrased from the 1983 report Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process (NRC, 1983), by the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS’s) National Research Council (NRC): Risk assessment is a process in which information is analyzed to determine if an environmental hazard might cause harm to exposed persons and ecosystems.

This process is highly interdisciplinary in that it draws from such diverse fields as biology, toxicology, ecology, engineering, geology, statistics, and the social sciences to create a rational framework for evaluating environmental hazards. While this definition has been somewhat enhanced and elaborated upon through subsequent NAS writings, it still basically describes risk assessment as it is performed within EPA. EPA uses risk assessment as a tool to integrate exposure and health effects or ecological effects information into a characterization of the potential for health hazards in humans or other hazards to our environment.