Exposure assessment reconstructs contact with a substance using work history, product identification, task descriptions, industrial hygiene data, and modeling. Industrial hygienists typically perform the analysis.
The output is an estimated dose that specific causation experts compare against exposure levels associated with disease.
Alternative Names:
Dose Reconstruction, Exposure Reconstruction
Why it Matters?
Assessment quality determines whether specific causation testimony survives challenge, since an expert opining that exposure caused disease without any quantification of that exposure faces a serious analytical gap objection. Defense assessments frequently show claimed exposures orders of magnitude below levels associated with the disease. Work history reconstruction is the vulnerable input, because it depends on decades-old recollection rather than records.
Frequently Confused with
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
What inputs does exposure assessment use?
Why does quantification matter for causation?
