Epidemiologic studies are required for assessing health risks related to toxic waste exposure. Since the settings in which such studies must be performed are extremely diverse, epidemiologic approaches must be versatile. For any particular study, three fundamental requirements are to assess what toxic materials are present, understand how human exposure may occur, and objectively measure possible biologic effects. In assessing links between exposure and disease, epidemiologists must be particularly aware of: expected disease frequencies in relation to the size of populations studied, implications of long or varied disease latencies for study design and competing causes of disease and associated confounding variables. These concepts are illustrated by discussion of epidemiologic studies related to the Love Canal toxic waste dump site in Niagara Falls, NY.