ABSTRACT
In 1983, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a report entitled Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process (National Research Council, 1983). The NAS had been charged with evaluating the process of risk assessment as performed at the federal level in order to determine the "mechanisms to ensure that government regulation rests on the best available scientific knowledge and to preserve the integrity of scientific data and judgments'' so that controversial decisions regulating chronic hazards could be avoided. The NAS recommended a framework that separated the scientific aspects of risk assessment from the policy aspects of risk management.
