Measurement method

Health risk assessment

Also: hazard quotient, excess lifetime cancer risk

The formal procedure — hazard identification, dose–response, exposure assessment, risk characterisation — by which agencies turn study results into limits and by which the risk of a measured concentration is expressed as a hazard quotient or an excess lifetime cancer risk.

G-0076 · Updated 5 September 2026 · Coridum Research

Why it matters indoors

A hazard quotient compares the estimated daily intake of a non-carcinogen with its reference concentration; a value above 1 signals possible concern. For carcinogens without a threshold (benzene, formaldehyde, radon), risk is expressed as additional cases per million people exposed for a lifetime, with 1 in 100 000 or 1 in a million used as acceptability benchmarks. The framework is what allows a formaldehyde reading and a radon reading to be compared on one scale.

Identifiers

MeSH
D018570

In the literature

  1. Phthalate Concentration Estimation and Exposure Assessment and Health Risk Assessment in Indoor Organic Film (2023). Indoor Air. doi:10.1155/2023/5491647 CKB 0933
  2. Kumar et al. Comprehensive health risk assessment of microbial indoor air quality in microenvironments… (2022). PloS one. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0264226 CKB 0489
  3. Otgonbyamba et al. Health Risk Assessment of Volatile Organic Compounds for Children in Indoor Air, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia (2023). doi:10.4209/aaqr.230028 CKB 0214

Studies in the Coridum Knowledge Base in which this term is used. The definition follows standard usage in WHO, ISO and textbook sources; it is not quoted from these papers.

CKB = document number in the Coridum Knowledge Base, our curated library of peer-reviewed studies. Follow the DOI for the original paper.