Risk Assessment for Environmental Health

Understanding risk to humans is one of the most important problems in environmental public health. Risk assessment is constantly changing with the advent of new exposure assessment tools, more sophisticated models, and a better understanding of disease processes. Risk assessment is also gaining greater acceptance in the developing world where major environmental problems exist. Developed in partnership with the Association of Schools of Public Health, this comprehensive text offers a thorough survey of risk assessment, management, and communications as these practices apply to public health.

Key Features:

• Provides a practical overview of environmental risk assessment and its application by discussing the process and providing case studies and examples
• Focuses on tools and approaches used for humans in an environment involving potential chemical hazards
• Fully updated, the first part introduces the underlying principles and techniques of the field, and the second examines case studies in terms of different risk assessment scenarios
• Risk assessment is a core requirement for the MPH degree in environmental health
• Useful “stories” suitable for case studies

Professor Mark G. Robson earned his PhD in plant science from Rutgers University in 1988 and his MPH in environmental health from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) in 1995. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Plant Biology at Rutgers School of Environmental and Biological Sciences and also is Visiting Professor and Senior Academic Advisor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok Thailand.

Professor William A. Toscano earned his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1978. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Pharmacology at the University of Washington Medical School, Seattle, from 1978 to 1980, after which he joined the toxicology faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health. In 1989, he moved to the University of Minnesota School of Public Health as Associate Professor and in 1993 to the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, where he was Professor and Chair of Environmental Health Sciences. In 1999, he returned to the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, where he is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Health, University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Dr. Qingyu Meng is an Adjunct Research Professor at Desert Research Institute and a Staff Toxicologist at Department of Toxic Substances Control, California Environmental Protection Agency. His research focuses on air pollution exposure assessment and chemical exposures in consumer products. He contributed to multiple Integrated Science Assessments, which serve as the scientific basis for setting National Ambient Air Quality Standards for criteria pollutants. He has authored and co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed publications in exposure science. He is a member of the Society of Toxicology and the Society for Risk Analysis, and was President of the Tri-state Chapter of the International Society for Exposure Science. He is an associate editor of Human and Ecological Risk Assessment – An International Journal.

Dr. Debra A. Kaden has more than 30 years of experience in toxicology and environmental health sciences, with an emphasis in the area of air toxics. She is a senior practitioner in the Ramboll’s Health Science practice. Dr. Kaden is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) – where she sits on several committees and is a past president of the New England chapter. She is also a member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) and the International Society for Exposure Science (ISES).

Dr. Kaden has authored more than 25 peer-reviewed publications in toxicology and environmental health sciences. She has spearheaded critical reviews of the state of science to identify research priorities for understanding exposure and health effects of mobile source air toxics, diesel exhaust, and electric and magnetic fields. She has also organized and convened workshops and conferences on scientific topics relevant to air pollution. She earned her MS and PhD degrees in toxicology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.