A Method for Estimating Lifetime Cancer Risks from Limited Epidemiologic Data

Partly because of the poor quality of exposure information on humans, most lifetime carcinogenic risk assessments have been based on animal data. There are, however, surrogate measures for exposure that have not been fully utilized. One of these is duration of exposure where data on mean exposure levels are available. A method is presented for the use of such data, and the method is illustrated by developing a risk assessment from the available epidemiologic literature on gasoline and kidney cancer. This risk assessment is fairly consistent across studies and close to a risk assessment based upon an experiment with rats. While there needs to be much improvement in the quality of environmental data available to epidemiologists, it is possible that a number of risk assessments can be made from existing epidemiologic data and efforts directed away from extrapolation from animal data.