Abstract
To assess the risk to the public from lifetime exposures to very low levels of carcinogens, federal agencies routinely model dose-response relationships and estimate the exposure levels that are likely to be “virtually safe”. The data for these purposes comes from animal bioassays which use much higher dose levels than those to which humans are exposed in the environment. The big problem is how to best estimate the dose-response curve at the very low dose levels. In this paper, I introduce a new framework to the problem which takes advantage of the fact that various dose-response curves differ in their inherent risk mechanisms. Within the framework, a new justification is given to the default model used by federal agencies. A new model, which complements the default model, has a similar justification. Together, they greatly improve risk/benefit analyses.
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Fygenson, M. (2001). Risk Assessment of Low Dose Exposure to Carcinogens. In: Fernholz, L.T., Morgenthaler, S., Stahel, W. (eds) Statistics in Genetics and in the Environmental Sciences. Trends in Mathematics. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-8326-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-8326-9_5
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Basel
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