Trends in quantitative cancer risk assessment.

Quantitative cancer risk assessment is a dynamic field, more closely coupled to rapidly advancing biomedical research than ever before. Six areas of change and growth are identified: expansion from models of cancer initiation to a more complete picture of the total carcinogenic process; trend from curve-fitting to biologically based models; movement from upperbound estimates to best estimates, with a more complete treatment of uncertainty; increased consideration of the role of susceptibility; growing development of expert systems and decision support systems; and emerging importance of risk communication.