Charnley G, Putzrath R M
HealthRisk Strategies, Washington, DC 20003, USA.
Environ Health Perspect. 2001 Feb;109(2):187-92. doi: 10.1289/ehp.01109187.
Risk-based regulation of chemical exposures from the environment generally relies on assumptions about the extent of people's susceptibility to chemically induced diseases. Those assumptions are intended to be health-protective; that is, they err on the side of overstating susceptibility. Recent concern about children's special susceptibilities has led to proposals that would make risk-based regulations one-tenth more stringent, unless data are available to refute the assumption that children are more susceptible than adults. In this paper we highlight some of the questions that should be addressed in the context of risk assessment to determine whether such increased stringency would accomplish the desired result of improving children's health. In particular, characterizing benefits of greater stringency requires more information about dose-response relationships than is currently available. Lowering regulatory levels has attendant costs but may not achieve benefits, for example, if the previous level were already below an actual or practical threshold. Without an ability to understand the potential benefit (or lack thereof) of the additional stringency, an appropriate consideration of benefits and costs is not possible.
基于风险对环境化学物质暴露进行监管，通常依赖于对人们对化学诱导疾病易感性程度的假设。这些假设旨在保护健康，也就是说，它们倾向于高估易感性。最近对儿童特殊易感性的关注导致了一些提议，这些提议将使基于风险的监管更加严格十分之一，除非有数据可反驳儿童比成年人更易受影响的假设。在本文中，我们强调了在风险评估背景下应解决的一些问题，以确定这种更高的严格性是否会实现改善儿童健康的预期结果。特别是，要描述更高严格性的益处，需要比目前更多关于剂量反应关系的信息。降低监管水平会带来相应成本，但可能无法实现益处，例如，如果先前的水平已经低于实际或实际阈值。如果没有能力理解额外严格性的潜在益处（或缺乏益处），就不可能对益处和成本进行适当的考量。
