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Health risk assessment, or herein risk assessment (RA) for short, is the process or function by which the potential adverse health effects of human exposure to etiologic agents are characterized and assessed. In the broadest sense, etiologic agents include not only chemicals or biological agents, but also any factor (e.g., age, sex, nutritional status, stress) that may modify the frequency or distribution of adverse health effects (also more commonly referred to as diseases) in a human community. Although the term is now often used to represent a quantitative assessment process, RA can be and has been used qualitatively to address health issues. The process used by the U.S. Surgeon General to reach the conclusion about the adverse health effects of cigarette smoking is at best a semi-quantitative RA process.
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