Modern methodological approaches to assessing public health risks due to chemicals exposure

The methodology for analyzing health risks caused by exposure to chemical pollutants in the environmental has been widely implemented; this creates some new priority challenges to be considered and tackled. The article identifies basic stages in the development of the methodology for assessing health risks caused by environmental pollution in the Russian Federation. Guides on risk analysis as well as some monographs published in Russia describe a strategic role that belongs to health risk analysis in providing sanitary-epidemiological wellbeing of the country population. We have analyzed modern trends in the development of the methodology for assessing public health risks caused by exposure to chemicals that pollute the environment. The article generalizes basic approaches recommended in foreign and Russian studies that are applied to increase quality of research in the field, to reduce uncertainties in calculations, as well as to find new ways of health risk quantification. The number of chemicals registered on the global scale over the last 65 years has been estimated. The article also provides generalized information on computerized and information systems (CIS) and databases (DB) that contain data on parameters of assessing health risks caused by various chemical exposures including leading world systems that allow assessing health harm caused by chemical exposure (calculation of an additional number of adverse health outcomes due to chemical exposure etc.). We have also summarized various reasons for underestimating public health risks and described several methodological approaches employed in research that make it possible to minimize underestimation of health hazards and reduce uncertainties of obtained results. The methodology for assessing health risks caused by harmful chemical pollutants in the environment is a complex systemic process. On the one hand, it involves the necessity to provide the maximum possible profound description of complexity of chemical environmental pollution; on the other hand, it should give a more comprehensive insight into possible nature and consequences of adverse effects produced by identified chemicals directly on the human body and indirectly on significant socioeconomic indicators of the society development. The aim of this study was to identify modern methodological approaches applied to assess public health risks due to chemical exposures and ways to reduce uncertainties of research results.