Dealing with uncertainties in environmental burden of disease assessment

Table 2 Illustrations of characterizations of uncertainties in environmental burden of disease assessments

Source of uncertainty		Nature Epistemic/Ontic (Process Variability/Normative Uncertainty)	Range Statistical/Scenario	Recognized ignorance	Methodological unreliability	Value diversity among analysts
CONTEXTUAL UNCERTAINTY
1	Multiple ways of defining the 'total environment'	E/Nor	Sc	-	+	++
2	Only including diseases that cause at least 1% of the global burden of disease	Nor	Sc	--	--	+
MODEL STRUCTURE UNCERTAINTY
3	Specific form of the exposure-response relationship is unknown	E	Sc	+	+	+
4	Evidence for causality (environmental factor leading to health effect) is weak and contradicting	E	Sc	++	++	+
5	Incomplete understanding of the joint effect of smoking and radon in relation to lung cancer	E	Sc	+	+	+
6	Accounting for susceptible groups if the available relative risk is not representative for this group	Pro/E	St	+	+	+
PARAMETER UNCERTAINTY
7	Determining a relative risk (RR) for long-term exposure to PM₁₀	E	St	+	+	-
8	Applying an American RR for PM₁₀ to the Netherlands	E	Sc	++	+	+
9	Use of severity weights	Nor/E	Sc	+	+	++
INPUT DATA UNCERTAINTY
10	Extrapolating non-assessment-specific exposure measurements	E	Sc	++	+	+
11	Measuring population exposure	E	St	+	+	-

ISSN: 1476-069X