Environmental Risk Assessment (Short for ERA) begun in 1970s, which was the result of the across development with EIA and RA. Its naissance, which indicates one great strategic turn in environmental protection, is a crying need of environmental protection one side, and a foregone conclusion of development in environmental science other side. It provides theoretical and scientific frameworks for environmental risk management and decision-making. This paper introduces the basic concepts, development history, recent research methods and results as well as their applications. It then discusses the existing problems in current environmental risk assessment practices and points out the field's future development trend as well as some specific suggestions.
