A General Framework to Deal with Uncertainty in Expert Panel Risk Assessment

International audience; The importance of clarifying and disclosing uncertainties in risk assessment (RA) has been acknowledged for several decades. However, even today, these uncertainties do not receive the attention they deserve to well inform decision makers. To overcome this situation, diverse regulators, health and safety agencies, and other bodies involving in RA at national, European or international level have recently mobilized themselves by reasserting the need to integrate uncertainty analysis in the RA process and making practical recommendations. The French agency for food, environmental and occupational health and safety (Anses) is one of them. This work presents the general framework developed by the Anses Expert Working Group on Methodology in Risk Assessment. Two critical points were addressed: A typology of uncertainties and a homogenized approach to deal with uncertainty analysis in different areas (human health related to the environment, work and food, animal health and welfare, and plant health). The proposed typology is divided into four classes (Context, Corpus of knowledge, Assessment methodology and Communication), according to the logic of an expert appraisal process. A five-step iterative approach, systematically preceded by a stage for planning the assessment, was proposed as a generic approach of uncertainty analysis. Especially, the importance of considering the decision-making context of the assessment from the planning stage is stressed. The iterative approach was developed to be flexible enough to enable the assessors ensure the analysis is proportionate to and fit for purpose of the assessment As part of a testing stage, the general framework was applied to different case studies dealing with diverse areas (health RA in humans, animals and plants). This testing phase was carried out in collaboration with different expert panels. It concluded that the generic and flexible nature of the proposed framework should be able to harmonize the practices in RA.