Next Generation Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA): Bigger, Better, Faster

New pathogens and contaminants that threaten public health and the environment continually emerge. While major advancements have been made in high-throughput analysis methodologies, the current “one-contaminant-at-a-time” approach to quantifying risk that continues to prevail in policy analysis is not sufficient to keep pace. Assessing coexposures and their associated synergisms, antagonisms, or other effects with respect to risk is needed to move beyond this approach. Leveraging concepts from computational toxicology and chemical risk assessment, we propose a roadmap for the integration and advancement of quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) to be bigger, better, and faster. The integrated risk assessment paradigm focuses on (1) integrating microbial omics tools into QMRA including broadening hazard considerations to combinations of pathogens and expressed genes, (2) combining chemical, nonchemical, and pathogen stressors in a common framework for informing cost and sustainability trade-offs in risk management decisions, and (3) advancing actionable risk assessment tools. This approach will promote transdisciplinary, practical risk management solutions by enabling decision-makers to rapidly predict and respond to health risks from complex modern environments.