The impact of health risk assessment (RA) on the field of epidemiology appears to be less direct or transparent. As of this year of 2000, worldwide those organizations established primarily for or by epidemiologists tend to include public health, biostatistics, and other traditional areas, rather than risk assessment, as a specialty program or interest.

One organization that seems to show a greater acceptance of RA into the field of epidemiology is the International Society of Exposure Analysis, which was founded in 1989 and has an official journal entitled The Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology. The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology is another organization that begins to follow this trend by publishing, in its journal Epidemiology, such topics as “Methodologic Issues in Epidemiologic Risk Assessment (September, 1999).” Another paper “Neuro-behavioral Epidemiology: Application in Risk Assessment”, published in a supplement issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (Grandjean et al., 1996), may also serve as a good indication of such RA acceptance by some epidemiologists.

There are also reference books entitled Environmental Epidemiology and Risk Assessment, Epidemiology and Health Risk Assessment, and the like. In addition, numerous courses with similar titles are advertised on the Internet, although they are not as many as those linking risk assessment to toxicology. It is of note here that the above references are developments all made after the mid 1980s.