What is Risk Assessment?

Risk Assessment is a process in which any known hazard is analyzed and

identified before they occur. The analysis that is to be brought about may be inferred
from past experiences that had been learned from closely similar situations or a
hypothesis produced by educated integration of data set upon the said condition.
Knowing the harm imposed, this may enable formulating multiple solutions in order to
adhere to the problems, eliminate the possible danger, or control the involved risk. Even
though risk assessment may identify the possible outcomes, it does not specifically render
an absolute statement on what will
Risk assessment covers a broad scope that may involve the society, workplace,
and even our own neighborhood, this tells us that it may insert an assessment in any form
that would bring danger to ones life no matter what the place would suggest. And to limit
this scope, we may only consider pacing through the topics in-lined with the environment
and that is environmental risk assessment.
In order to understand what is meant by environmental risk assessment it is
important to be familiar with the concepts of hazard and risk. These terms have different
meanings and are not interchangeable. The following definitions are used here. Hazard is
the inherent potential for something to cause harm. Hazards can include substances,
machines, energy forms, or the way work is carried out. On the other hand, risk is a
combination of the likelihood or probability that the hazard will cause actual harm and
the severity of the consequences. .

In general, the term environmental covers the physical surroundings that are
common to everybody including air, water, land, plants and wildlife. The definition used
in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 is that the environment '... consists of all, or
any, of the following media, namely the air, water and land'. Thus environmental risk
assessment covers the risk to all ecosystems, including humans, exposed via, or impacted
via, these media. The term environmental risk assessment does not normally cover the
risks to individuals or the general public at large from consumer products or from
exposure in the work place, where other specific legislation applies.
In conclusion, an environmental risk assessment (ERA) is a process that evaluates
the likelihood or probability that adverse effects may occur to environmental values, as a
result of human activities. By this, it may also be used as a support tool for policy
evaluation, land use planning, and resource management decision making. It is
systematic, and can be applied in a variety of situations, ranging from those with minimal
available data and resources, to those with detailed inventories and complex systems
modeling. It is a process of predicting whether there may be a risk of adverse effects on
the environment caused by a chemical substance. Environmental exposure concentrations
of a chemical are predicted and compared to predicted no-effect concentrations for
different environmental compartments.