Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals (1996) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Gilbert S. Omenn, University of Washington
Gilbert S. Omenn, University of Washington
Pages 449-462
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From page 449... ...
Human activities account for most of the environmental problems we're trying to redress or anticipate, though we should not neglect natural disasters and the opportunities to anticipate and mitigate their effects. Third, we need a stewardship strategy that combines pollution prevention and aggressive cleanup.
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From page 450... ...
Other laws, such as the Clean Air Act, do not explicitly authorize balancing benefits and risks. A second risk management strategy is to set target levels of risk, usually as federal guidance to the states.
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From page 451... ...
Finally, and most neglected, is the use of risk assessment to determine what we've accomplished. One source of skepticism about risk assessment and about our whole program of environmental stewardship and cleanup is that many people really don't understand how much has been accomplished in the last 25 years, despite well-documented gains in air quality, water quality, habitat protection, product safety, waste disposal, recycling, and pollution prevention.
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From page 452... ...
RESEARCH RISK ASSESSMENT RISK MANAGEMENT 452 Laboratory and field Development of observations regulatory ooptions Toxicity assessment: hazard identification and dose-response assessment Information on Evaluation of public extrapolation methods health, economic, social, political consequences of regulatory ooptions Research needs identified Risk from risk assessment characterization process Field measurements, Exposure assessment Agency decisions characterization of Emissions characterization and actions poplulations FIGURE 2 LINKING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO ENVIRONMENTAL GOALS
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From page 453... ...
This Commission is the second part of a two-part mandate from the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, which first instructed EPA to fund a study at the National Academy of Sciences, in which Debbie Stine was a key staff person, on Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment (NRC 1994a)
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From page 454... ...
Medical and industrial uses and, more dramatically, the Department of Energy nuclear weapons production sites remind us that we must think about mixtures of radiation and chemical exposures and understand the similarities and differences in their effects, their mechanisms, and their dose-response curves and take some lessons from one into the
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From page 455... ...
Those limitations in our science base limit the use of risk assessment as an analytical tool because the data are not there to address questions that state and local health officers and lay people logically expect us to address. The second mandate involves exposure scenarios.
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From page 456... ...
In this way, risk assessors and risk managers help bridge the gap between the people who want to have a practical basis for making a decision and taking action and explaining it and those who would like to deal with all the risk-related assumptions and details fresh every time. The fourth area of the Commission's mandate is a set of risk management issues for risk reduction.
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From page 457... ...
Once the objective is determined to reduce exposures to certain levels to protect against cancers, birth defects, neurotoxicity, or immunological effects, or to protect habitat or achieve other environmental objects, it should be clear that we want to do so in the least costly manner. It should not be a burden to an agency head to stand before the public and explain that the benefits expected to be achieved through these regulatory actions justify the costs, by whatever metric that person feels capable of marshaling to build public support for the decision.
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From page 458... ...
Table 3 shows a contrast between EPA risk assessment and health assessment as normally practiced by local health departments, state health departments, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, part of the U.S. Public Health Service, around Superfund sites or other places of possible contamination and exposure for local populations.
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From page 459... ...
. This paper included Table 4, which shows the official 10 leading medical causes of death in the United States in 1990 and the lifestyles leading to half of these, 2.1 million deaths per year.
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From page 460... ...
There is considerable uncertainty about the technical assessments and priorities upon which those cleanup plans and associated promissory notes were built, and there has been a congressional demand for riskbased, integrated assessment of the present risks and the risks and cost-effectiveness of remediation options. The recommendations of the National Research Council report called Building Consensus (NRC 1994b)
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From page 461... ...
Building Consensus recommended that risk assessments should involve the public, evaluate the risks of remediation, and involve an external organization. My colleagues and I have organized that new external entity, the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP)
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