What we can learn on risk assessment of chemicals from the Concise International Chemical Assessment Document (CICAD) Project

: IPCS (the International Programme on Chemical Safety) has launched a new project on the Concise International Chemical Assessment Document (CICAD) as one of its major targets, which is to assess health and ecological risk from exposure to toxic chemicals in the environment through international collaboration. In this project, the author and others successfully established a framework in fulfilling ambitious aims of developing concise, but useful risk assessment documents on chemicals, while assuring credibility and efficiency in the process, and incorporating new ideas from ever developing risk assessment methodology and related sciences. This combination of usefulness in the outputs, the credibility and efficiency in the process, and the flexibility in the ideas reflecting scientific progress, shows a good example of what we should do in improving our risk assessment in this country and developing assessment documents.