Safety Assessment
Safety assessment is an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the scientific understanding and measurement of potential ingredient hazards as well as potential ingredient exposures, and ultimately the risks associated with them. When assessing the safety of chemicals, P&G Beauty often uses and refers to the methods of Human or Environmental Risk Assessment.
Professional risk assessment specialists are employed by chemical manufacturing companies, consumer product companies, toy manufacturers, medical device manufacturers, government agencies, insurance agencies, consulting firms and any other company or organization that needs to rely on risk assessment for some or all of its activities. At consumer product companies such as P&G, risk assessors work to ensure the safety of the company's products and manufacturing operations to people (consumers, workers, communities) and to the environment.
The methodologies P&G employs for safety assessment have evolved over a number of years through the work of industry, government and academic scientists. P&G scientists have played a significant in developing such methodologies. Many have been standardized and have gained broad acceptance across scientific, organizational and international boundaries.
Risk assessment is also present in the everyday life and in every profession, even though it may not always be thought of in this way. When deciding whether to cross the road or whether to eat healthy, judgments are made about the hazards involved and we assess the risks before taking action. People in the medical profession, for example, deal with relative risk every day: when they treat a patient with a prescription medication they have to consider side effects and other risk factors; when recommending surgery they have to be reasonably certain that the benefits will outweigh the risks associated with the surgery.