A probabilistic framework for non-cancer risk assessment.

Risk assessment involves an analysis of the relationship between exposure and health related outcomes to derive an allowable exposure level or to estimate a low-dose risk. Acceptable levels of human exposure for non-cancer effects generally are derived by dividing an experimental no-observed-adverse-effect-level or a lower confidence limit benchmark dose by a product of several uncertainty factors. This paper presents a hierarchical modeling framework for a probabilistic approach to non-cancer risk assessment. The hierarchical model integrates the distributions of uncertainty factors and the distribution of the actual exposure level to construct the dose-response model for the proportion of population at risk and the dose-response model for the expected proportion of population at risk for a given exposure distribution. The proposed approach is based on the use of the BMDL (lower confidence limit on the benchmark dose) as a POD (point of departure) for risk assessment of non-cancer effects.