As used in public health and environmental regulation, risk assessment is the systematic, scientific description of potential adverse effects of exposures to hazardous substances or situations. It is a complex but valuable set of tools for federal regulatory agencies, helping them to identify issues of potential concern, select regulatory options, and estimate the range of a forthcoming regulations benefits. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) used risk assessment information in a 1998 final rule to conclude that disinfection byproducts (e.g., chloroform) in drinking water could cause as many as 9,300 bladder cancer cases a year, and that a 24-percent reduction in those byproducts could result in monetized health benefits of about $4 billion. However, risk assessments are also sometimes controversial, as evidenced by the fact that the disinfection byproduct rule was successfully challenged in court over whether the agency used the best scientific evidence available in support of certain assumptions. 2 Given the significant yet controversial nature of risk assessments, it is important that policymakers understand how risk assessments are conducted, the extent to which risk estimates produced by different agencies and programs are comparable, and the reasons for differences in agencies risk assessment approaches and results.

Consider the Consequences of Bringing a Chemical to MarketProduct Stewardship: Life Cycle Analysis and the Environment explores the regulatory and scientific aspects of the life-cycle consequences of bringing a chemical to market. Using case studies to bring critical points to life, this multidisciplinary text explores the factors that influence ou

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

The rapid conversion of land to urban and suburban areas has profoundly altered how water flows during and following storm events, putting higher volumes of water and more pollutants into the nation's rivers, lakes, and estuaries. These changes have degraded water quality and habitat in virtually every urban stream system. The Clean Water Act regulatory framework for addressing sewage and industrial wastes is not well suited to the more difficult problem of stormwater discharges. This book calls for an entirely new permitting structure that would put authority and accountability for stormwater discharges at the municipal level. A number of additional actions, such as conserving natural areas, reducing hard surface cover (e.g., roads and parking lots), and retrofitting urban areas with features that hold and treat stormwater, are recommended.