The importance of risk assessment to the nation's health and economy.

The global marketplace is changing rapidly. Never in history has the opportunity to capture new markets with new products and new generations of products been greater. However, never has the chance of losing established markets been higher. We are failing to develop new products despite the fact that Americans have paid for the science from which the world's new technologies were developed. There are many reasons for our failure to turn scientific leads into products. One of the most obvious is that we overestimate the risk of new technologies. Present policy uses a conservatively biased risk assessment process to estimate risk. This process uses many assumptions to bridge gaps in our scientific knowledge about risk. If we wish to be competitive, we must bring safe, inexpensive new products to the marketplace faster. We must seek ways of making our policies more effective while still protecting public health. Risk assessment sets the standards for product development, product approval, and environmental release. A slight miscalculation in "safety levels" can result in tens of billions of dollars in cost added to products. These added costs have a major and direct impact on the competitiveness of U.S. products in the global marketplace where differences in consumer acceptance can be calculated in a few percentage points difference in price.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)