ECOLOGIA NEWSLETTER Archive
March/April 1995 Issue #32
REASSESSING RISK ASSESSMENT: PUTTING SCIENCE INTO
POLICY MAKING;
RECOGNIZING POLITICS MASKED AS SCIENCE
Western industrial countries use a process called "risk
assessment" when evaluating environmental hazards. In theory, risk
assessment is a highly objective scientific tool for environmental
decision making. In practice however, risk assessment can be
politicized. It can involve confusing and controversial assumptions,
and it often contains a significant degree of uncertainty. This issue of
ECOLOGIA Newsletter attempts to examine and clarify some of the
issues surrounding the practice of risk assessment. In addition,
examples will show the range of uses and abuses of risk assessment
today.
Defining Risk and Risk Assessment
Risk assessment is a formal scientific process for calculating
the probability and degree of harm that will result from exposure to an
environmental hazard. Clinical, laboratory, and field evidence is used
to produce statistical projections which estimate the harm associated
with exposure to chemical compounds or radiation. Risk assessments
attempt to examine the various pathways of pollutants into the
environment or into humans. Risk assessment also considers the
dilution, natural degradation, or dispersal of pollution in the
environment in the calculation of probable doses.
Risk assessment leads policy makers to conduct
environmental impact assessments for new technologies or substances
specific to each site, or for each medium (food, water, air) rather than
establishing fixed and universal standards for emission and exposure.
Thus as a result of risk assessment, higher lead emissions may be
allowed at a rural facility where no other lead emissions are present
than would be allowed at an identical facility in a polluted urban area
where too much lead risk is already present.
In theory this process allows for flexibility in emission control
strategies. It provides for the consideration of economic factors such
as the cost of antipollution control programs. The goal is to avoid
unnecessary expenditures where they would not result in a significant
reduction of risk.
Risk assessment can allow policy makers to ask and answer
the difficult question, "Where can I get the most benefit (reduction of
risk) with a limited amount of money?"
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