Challenges for Risk Assessors

At the early part of the 21st century, occupational safety and health risk assessors face a variety of challenges. In addition to technical issues, the challenges for risk assessors include: assessment of risks of mixtures/and synergistic effects; incorporation of biological information into risk assessments; development of different ways of presenting risk information to better inform policy makers and the public; better expressions of uncertainty and assumptions; and harmonization of assessments across agencies and countries. All of these challenges will occur against a background of unfolding understanding of human and other genomes. Risk assessors will be motivated and pressured to use genomic and related technologies, but ethical, social, and technical issues need to be addressed before widespread use.