Background

In 1969, the International Agency for Research on Cancer initiated a programme to evaluate the carcinogenic risk of chemicals to humans and to produce monographs on individual chemicals. The Monographs programme has since been expanded to include consideration of exposures to complex mixtures of chemicals and of exposures to other agents, such as radiation and viruses. With Supplement 6, the title of the series was modified from IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to humans to IARC Monographs on the Evaluation of Carcinogenic Risks to Humans, in order to reflect the widened scope of the programme.

The criteria established in 1971 to evaluate carcinogenic risk to humans were adopted by the working groups whose deliberations results in the first 16 volume of the IARC Monographs series. Those criteria were subsequently updated by further ad-hoe working groups.

Objective and Scope

The objective of the programme is to prepare, with the help of international working groups of experts, and to publish in the form of monographs, critical reviews and evaluations of evidence on the carcinogenicity of a wide range of human exposures. The Monographs may also indicate where additional research efforts are needed.

The Monographs represent the first step in carcinogenic risk assessment, which involves examination of all relevant information in order to assess the strength of the available evidence that certain exposures could alter the incidence of cancer in humans. The second step is quantitative risk estimation. Detailed, quantitative evaluations of epidemiological data may be made in the Monographs, but without extrapolation beyond the range of the data available. Quantitative extrapolation from experimental data to the human situation is not undertaken.