SOFTWARE REVIEW OF RISK-ASTERISK-ASSISTANT (VERSION 1.1) AND RISKEZ (VERSION 1), BOTH FOR WINDOWS

RiskEZ and RiskAssistant both make site risk assessment more accessib le to many users and provide a relatively efficient means for performi ng screening level risk assessments. The programs perform basic site r isk assessment calculations for users and provide point estimates of i ncremental individual cancer risks and non-cancer hazard quotients fol lowing standard Environmental Protection Agency risk assessment guidan ce documents. RiskAssistant allows the user to input raw data from wh ich it can perform some dispersion modeling and calculate exposure poi nt concentrations, while RiskEZ takes the exposure point concentration s as inputs. RiskEZ includes features that allow multiple network user s to work on the same site and to deal with radioactive contaminants a s well as chemical ones, while RiskAssistant limits access to a site to one user at a time and it includes non-radioactive substances. Neit her program currently has the capability to perform probabilistic risk analyses, although RiskAssistant allows the user to peform some sens itivity analysis. This review highlights differences between the progr ams and demonstrates how selection of a particular program might influ ence the results.