A systematic review of methods of uncertainty analysis and their applications in the assessment of chemical exposures, effects, and risks

Abstract

Methods of uncertainty analysis are being included increasingly in regulatory chemical risk assessment. Although best practices have been established by several safety agencies in Europe and the United States, they exist only in the grey literature – there has been no comprehensive analysis of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature on these methods. We therefore conducted a systematic review of the recent peer-reviewed literature (2007–2013) on uncertainty analysis relevant to chemical risks. The main objective was to determine whether current methods are robust enough for regulatory use, because the methods used to protect public health must meet the most stringent scientific standards. Based on 297 papers, we concluded that the peer-reviewed literature is much more critical about the disadvantages of those methods, compared to the grey literature. Furthermore, uncertainty analyses can be influenced significantly by subjective expert judgment. As a suggested improvement, we developed guidelines for transparent reporting of uncertainty assessment results.

Keywords:

• uncertainty
• chemical risk
• probabilistic
• expert judgment
• REACH

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Jeroen van der Sluijs, Theo Vermeire and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks, to Céline Vaslin for help with the figures, and to Sharilynn Wardrop and Kara Lefevre for stylistic and linguistic improvements.

Additional information

Funding

Funding. This work was supported by the French Ministry of Ecology in the framework of the PNRPE 2010 programme (URL: http://www.pnrpe.fr/), under grant 11-MRES-PNRPE-4-CVS-30, “Toolkit for uncertainty and knowledge quality analysis of endocrine disruptors’ risk assessments: the case study of Bisphenol A” (DICO-Risque).