Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is a scientific process of evaluating the adverse effects caused by a substance, activity, lifestyle, or natural phenomenon. OEHHA is responsible for developing and providing risk managers in state and local government agencies with toxicological and medical information relevant to decisions involving public health. State agency users of such information include all boards and departments within Cal/EPA, as well as the Department of Public Health, the Department of Food and Agriculture, the Office of Emergency Services, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Department of Justice.

Several laws and regulations govern OEHHA's risk assessment work.

Reports, Notices, Documents

Safe methods of fire ash cleanup and the hazards associated with exposure.

A Story of Health was developed by ATSDR, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment (CHE), the University of California, San Francisco, Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit (UCSF PEHSU), the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California EPA (OEHHA), and the Science and Environmental Health Network (SEHN) to explain how environments interact with genes to influence health across the lifespan.

OEHHA hosted its Children's Environmental Health Symposium in Sacramento.  The theme of the symposium was "Impacts of Environmental Chemicals on Development – Are complex interactions captured by traditional risk assessment practices?"

In 2013 speakers from Children’s Environmental Health Research Centers, Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Units on the West Coast and OEHHA gathered to discuss children’s exposure to chemicals, how the environment changes the development of the brain and nervous system in children and childhood leukemia.

Cyanotoxin concentrations at which no adverse effects are expected to occur. The
risk assessment includes two parts: toxicity assessment and exposure assessment.