Approaches of Health Risk Assessment for Heavy Metals Applied in China and Advance in Exposure Assessment Models: A Review

With the increasingly development of economy, the environmental quality in China is becoming severely worse and worse. Much more attention to health risk assessment for human exposed by contaminations is paid due to the increasing healthy awareness. Compared to other contaminations, larger area and more people are contaminated by heavy metals. In order to research the health risk for human exposed by heavy metals, USEPA model, statistical models, GIS and bioavailability have been applied in China. Although exposure assessment model, as a key part of health risk assessment, has been widely studied in other countries, the relevant report is limited in China. This paper summarize both the approaches of health risk assessment for heavy metals applied in urban soil(dust), mining areas, diet, ground water, table water, atmospheric particulates, and some classical exposure assessment models applied in USA and Europe: environmental exposure assessment models and diet exposure assessment models. Due to the late start in the study on the health risk assessment, there are lots of shortcomings in every aspects of the health risk assessment in China. Along with the development of new technologies, the health risk assessment will be one of the most popular research fields. The study on the contaminated environmental behavior, the relationship between dose and response, models and risk information will be extensively conducted in the future in China.