Risk Assessment and Risk Management: Volume 9 - Brossura

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0854042407 ISBN 13: 9780854042401

Casa editrice: Royal Society of Chemistry, 1998

Riassunto

Risk assessment is considered by many analysts to be an objective scientific tool. It is considered to be variously influenced by broader issues which in turn have important practical implications both for risk assessors and decision makers. Risk Assessment and Risk Management examines a range of practical applications of risk assessment methods and risk management procedures in the broad context of environmental science and technology. Written by acknowledged experts in the field, the articles cover a variety of areas, with reference to subjects as diverse as BSE, the use of risk assessment in government, using computer modelling as an aid to risk assessment in the case of accidental contamination of rivers and estuaries, quantitative cancer risk assessment related to carcinogens in the environment, landfilling of household wastes, environmental risk assessment and management of chemicals, and aquatic risk assessment and management of pesticides. This book provides a detailed and wide-ranging review of the many aspects of risk assessment and risk management which have excited so much debate and controversy in recent times. It will be essential reading for all those involved in the assessment and management of risk, particularly in the context of environmental science.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

The series has been edited by Professors Hester and Harrison since it began in 1994.

Professor Roy Harrison OBE is listed by ISI Thomson Scientific (on ISI Web of Knowledge) as a Highly Cited Researcher in the Environmental Science/Ecology category. He has an h-index of 54 (i.e. 54 of his papers have received 54 or more citations in the literature). In 2004 he was appointed OBE for services to environmental science in the New Year Honours List. He was profiled by the Journal of Environmental Monitoring (Vol 5, pp 39N-41N, 2003). Professor Harrison’s research interests lie in the field of environment and human health. His main specialism is in air pollution, from emissions through atmospheric chemical and physical transformations to exposure and effects on human health. Much of this work is designed to inform the development of policy.

Now an emeritus professor, Professor Ron Hester's current activities in chemistry are mainly as an editor and as an external examiner and assessor. He also retains appointments as external examiner and assessor / adviser on courses, individual promotions, and departmental / subject area evaluations both in the UK and abroad.

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Risk Assessment and Risk Management

By R.E. Hester, R. M. Harrison

The Royal Society of Chemistry

Copyright © 1998 The Royal Society of Chemistry
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85404-240-1

Contents

Isolation or Integration? The Relationship between Risk Assessment and Risk Management Simon Gerrard and Judith Petts, 1, 
1 Introduction, 1, 
2 Historical Review, 2, 
3 Risk Assessment in Siting Decisions, 7, 
4 Risk Ranking and Site Prioritization in the Management of Contaminated Land, 9, 
5 The Development of Operator and Pollution Risk Appraisal (OPRA), 14, 
6 Using Risk Assessment as a Means to Derive National Policy Objectives, 15, 
7 Conclusions, 18, 
The Use of Risk Assessment in Government Jim McQuaid and Jean-Marie Le Guen, 21, 
1 Risk and Government, 21, 
2 Problems, 21, 
3 Solutions, 25, 
4 Adopting Quality Regulation, 25, 
5 Establishing Networks for Achieving More Effective Liaison between Departments, 32, 
6 Improving Systems for Communicating Risk Information to the Public, 34, 
7 Strengthening the Links with Industry, Non-Governmental Organizations and Academic Institutions, 35, 
8 Concluding Remarks, 36, 
Pollution Risk Management Simon Halfacree, 37, 
1 Introduction, 37, 
2 Potable Water Risk Management, 39, 
3 General Environmental Risk Management, 46, 
4 Major Accident Risk Management, 52, 
5 The Future, 54, 
Quantitative Cancer Risk Assessment — Pitfalls and Progress Steve E. Hrudey, 57, 
1 Introduction, 57, 
2 Early History, 59, 
3 Regulatory Practice, 63, 
4 Major Criticisms and Controversies, 72, 
5 Advances and New Approaches for Cancer Risk Assessment, 81, 
6 Conclusions, 89, 
7 Acknowledgements, 90, 
Environmental Risk Assessment and Management of Chemicals Derek Brown, 91, 
1 Introduction, 91, 
2 Detergent Surfactant Biodegradability, 92, 
3 OECD/ISO/EU Test Methods, 94, 
4 OECD/EU Environmental Risk Assessment, 100, 
5 Environmental Risk Management, 108, 
6 Conclusions and Summary, 110, 
Assessment of Risks to Human Health from Landfilling of Household Wastes Gev Eduljee, 113, 
1 Introduction, 113, 
2 Hazard Identification, 115, 
3 Release and Transport of Contaminants, 115, 
4 Exposure Assessment, 119, 
5 Toxicity Assessment, 122, 
6 Risk Estimation, Evaluation and Control, 124, 
7 Case Study, 125, 
8 Summary, 132, 
9 Acknowledgements, 133, 
10 Appendix, 133, 
Aquatic Risk Assessment and Risk Management for Pesticides Steve Maund and Neil Mackay, 137, 
1 Introduction, 137, 
2 Effects Assessment, 140, 
3 Exposure Assessment, 149, 
4 Risk Characterization, 158, 
Subject Index, 161, 

CHAPTER 1

Isolation or Integration? The Relationship Between Risk Assessment and Risk Management

SIMON GERRARD AND JUDITH PETTS

1 Introduction

The potential impact of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) has proved to be one of the most controversial risk management issues of the decade. Whilst interspersed with numerous other risk controversies, BSE has outperformed many of its contemporaries in terms of length, scientific uncertainty, economic impact and public outrage. One of the most pressing decision problems was how best to deal with the carcasses such that the public would be confident that the threat of BSE contamination was negligible. In June 1997 the Environment Agency in the UK issued a press release explaining the results of trial burns it had conducted at two coal-fired power stations. 1 It reported that:

'The risk of human infection resulting from burning cattle cull wastes in power stations would be negligible. A detailed risk assessment, carried out by the Agency, based on test rig trial burning of meat and bonemeal (MBM) and tallow from cattle slaughtered under the Goverment's Over Thirty Month Scheme (OTMS) shows that the risk of an individual contracting CJD (Creutzfeldt Jacob Disease) would be as low as 1 in 30 000 million. This is 3000 times less than the risk of death by lightning'.

The press release went on to confirm that, though the studies showed that the risk to both the public and the workers would be negligible, the Agency would not be giving blanket approval to applications for cattle incineration. Approval would only be granted if all statutory requirements were met: 'Every application will be rigorously assessed on its own merits and there will also be widespread public consultation before a decision is taken'.

It is indicative of current risk debates that a regulatory agency chooses to announce the result of its quantitative risk assessment in the same breath as its assurance that, despite the extremely low risk, widespread public consultation will occur in advance of any decision. This example could be interpreted in different ways. Some may question why widespread consultation is necessary if the risk is so low. Others may ask what is so wrong with the risk assessment that widespread consultation is still necessary?

The rise of risk assessment as a tool for decision makers comes in the face of mounting criticism from those in industry who argue that it is too conservative in its assumptions and thus creates public fear and unnecessary financial hardship and from environmental and community groups who see the tool as too simplistic and narrow to deal with the complex reality of risk issues. Characterizing risk debates is fraught with difficulty as terms are interchangeable and possess different meanings for different parties. However, these positions may be characterized by the extent to which risk assessment is regarded merely as one of many tools available to decision makers or as a decision-making process itself.

Risk management encompasses disciplines from the natural, engineering, political, economic and social sciences. One of the key issues highlighted by the multidisciplinarity of risk management is whether risk assessment as a scientific process can and should be separated from risk management. The basis of the arguments for and against separation are rooted in fundamental views of the role of science and society. Over the 20–30 year period of risk management research much has been learned, though many of the important lessons (not least stakeholder involvement) relate as much to the challenges of working in a multidisciplinary setting as to the development of the single disciplines involved.

Whilst we recognize that risk assessment is clearly a part of the process of managing risks, we also note that there are many different risk assessment approaches in different decision-making contexts. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss all of the variabilities. Instead, we focus on example applications of risk assessment at different tiers of decision making: project/site-specific, strategic regulation and policy making. This includes two distinct types of risk assessment. Quantitative risk assessment relates to an activity or substance and attempts to quantify the probability of adverse effects due to exposure. In contrast, comparative risk assessment is a procedure used for ranking risk issues by their severity in order to prioritize and justify resource allocation. The examples of these two types discussed here provide a means of illustrating (i) how risk assessment is being used in decision making, (ii) the issues which this use raises in relation to robustness, efficiency and fairness, and (iii) whether and how risk assessment can be more effectively integrated into risk management. First, however, it is important to provide some historical background to the isolation versus integration debate and to expand upon our definitions.

2 Historical Review

At a simple level the arguments for isolation or integration of risk assessment (particularly quantified risk assessment) into risk management can be reduced to the degree to which one believes that science and the scientific process can be regarded as wholly objective. Logical positivism regards science as objective, taking the view that scientific assessments of risk should be kept separate from the social and political aspects of decision making. Science is devoted to the establishment of fact and is therefore necessarily isolated from the value judgements that pervade the rest of the decision-making process. By contrast, cultural relativism argues that science and the scientific process are inextricably linked to subjective value judgements; that science is bound-up with political and social institutions and is thus unable to be wholly objective. Between the two positions of complete isolation and total integration exist a variety of other positions that base their arguments to a greater or lesser extent on the two endpoints. Of these, perhaps the most persuasive is the notion of scientific proceduralism, which seeks to tread a somewhat cautious path between the two extremes. Scientific proceduralism focuses on the process by which scientific activities are conducted. It recognizes explicitly that science is not wholly objective and that subjective value judgements within technical risk assessments have to be acknowledged and dealt with in an appropriate manner. One of the strengths of this approach is that it does not argue for a wholesale rejection of risk assessment. Rather it focuses upon a blend of robust scientific and technical analysis, effective communication and stakeholder involvement. This might seem like a compromise solution. There is little doubt that it is not an easy solution, not least in terms of how existing decision-making structures can adapt to meet the requirements of integration. However, the 1997 publication of a United States Presidential Commission report on risk assessment and risk management not only suggests that the message of scientific proceduralism is now firmly on the political agenda, but also helps to put in context the development of the arguments.

At the beginning of the 1980s an increasing level of concern was expressed in the US that the scientific aspects of risk assessment were being corrupted by extraneous and irrelevant social policy dimensions. One high-level study proposed a return to the separation of facts and values in the management of risks. The proposed scheme relied upon a tripartite system of scientific risk assessment, risk assessment policy and risk management. The first dealt with facts, the last with values, leaving risk assessment policy to liaise between the two. The point to make is that eventually science and policy must interact. The bridge between the two extremes, here called risk assessment policy, is constructed from decision rules based either on fact or on value, whichever is chosen as being a legitimate matter of policy choice. That science might somehow be conducted in isolation and occasionally deliver objective information, which the policy makers can then choose either to accept or reject, is not a plausible vision. In considering the nature of quantitative risk assessment, the US National Academy of Sciences identified possibly 50 opportunities where scientists may have to make discretionary judgements, ranging from the kinds of hazards to study to the identification of most relevant exposure pathways. This is supported by a number of studies that have investigated different teams' efforts to conduct risk assessments for the same process where, typically, risk estimates can vary by at least one order of magnitude, depending on the assumptions made at the outset.8 Though opponents use these studies to decry the use of risk assessment, we adopt a more moderate position which recognizes that science, and with it risk assessment, has to be directed. In this context, risk assessment is a tool which, if used appropriately, can aid decision makers.

In the UK a similar discomfort has been felt by some scientists concerning the gradual incursion into their domain of social and political dimensions. An illustration of this can be found in the preface to the Royal Society's second risk management volume, published nine years after its initial report on the techniques of risk assessment. The second report focused more broadly on risk management and included a chapter on risk perception and communication. The preface to the report contained the explanation that the content should be viewed as a report not of the Society's but of the chapter authors' views. By disguising its inability to address the issue of how best to manage scientific and non -scientific material in terms of not wanting to 'pre-empt the very debate that the Council and the contributors wish to encourage', the Society left open the whole issue of the increasingly unhappy marriage of facts and values.

The search for truth championed by positivist philosophies in the development of knowledge within the natural sciences, in particular Popper's logical positivism, has dominated almost to the exclusion of alternative rationalities. For example, in the risk field it remains a widely held belief that an actual risk number can be calculated with ever increasing precision for any particular technology, event or activity. The dominance of this prevailing attitude, particularly amongst decision makers new to the concept of risk, serves to promote the importance of technical assessments that subsequently drive the framing of hazard and risk management problems. It has been argued, not least by social scientists themselves, that social anthropology, history, economics, political science, cultural theory and the other social sciences have failed, to a large extent, to provide the same kind of explanatory power as the natural sciences.

Risk perception and communication discussions were founded in the genuine expert puzzlement over active public opposition to technologies that scientists thought were safe, with a belief that the public were irrational and merely had to be educated. However, following early work to identify what was an acceptable level of risk it became clear that the concept of risk means more to individuals than measurable fatalities or injuries. A broad range of qualitative characteristics has been identified by psychometric research, related not only to the nature of the potential harm, but also to the potential for control, the extent to which risk management institutions can be trusted to manage risks and concern over equity in risk bearing. The socio-cultural literature has explained the reasons for such responses as a reflection of the social arrangements or institutions which people identify with or participate in.

The development of risk communication research and discussion has mirrored, but also built upon, perception research, and provides the strongest support for an integration argument. Fischhoff provides an historical review which charts the progress from a view of communication as a one-way process of educating people about acceptable risks, through recognition that communication has to be a two-way process, to current discussion of how to involve different stakeholders and particularly the public as partners in decision making. The risk communication literature supports the scientific procedural approach by allowing a greater degree of flexibility to be built into the social system through the adoption of decision-making systems which rely upon the rigours of positivistic science and upon the traditional (everyday) experiences of other social groups.

The extent of development of a scientific argument in favour of integration can be seen in the Presidential Commission report. A new framework for risk management is presented which stresses (i) the engagement of stakeholders as active partners, (ii) an iterative approach which allows for new information to be built into the management process at any stages, and (iii) the need for health and environmental risks to be evaluated in their broader context rather than focused on single chemicals in single media. How far this report will meet favour with those rooted in logical positivism remains to be seen. In the UK, the debate is still largely open. A recent review of risk assessment in government departments recognizes the importance of stakeholder concerns and communication but still relegates solutions to continuing scientific/public controversies to those giving the public 'balanced information' about risks and 'enough time to reflect upon it'. Meanwhile, a report for Parliamentary members in reviewing the isolation versus integration debate concludes in favour of the latter, stressing 'decision-making should be open, accountable and inclusive: seeking to achieve consensus; and taking proper account of both the natural and social scientific dimensions of risk'.

There remains no widely accepted, standard definition of risk assessment and management. The risk field is littered with alternative phrases which confuse discussions. The boundaries between risk assessment, risk evaluation, risk analysis and risk management are often blurred, leading to complications when discussing the relative importance of each, and confusion over the precise activities that comprise each component.

Many different schema have been developed to depict the structure and process of risk management. Traditionally, primarily linear approaches to understanding risk management have prevailed, reflecting the separation of risk assessment from risk management activities. However, we prefer to adopt a cyclical view of risk management as illustrated in Figure 1. This differs from many of its counterparts in that the cycle emphasizes the importance of feedback to the extent that the starting and finishing points for risk management merge. One effect of blurring these distinctions is to challenge the basis of science as a driving force and framing mechanism for solving risk management problems. To assist this shift in dominance further, at the heart of the risk management cycle lie the combined components of risk perception and communication, which reflect the fact that many of the examples of both good and bad practice in risk management hinge around the way in which debates are staged, competing views of risk are addressed and debated and, ultimately, decisions are made. Figure 1 is now close to that proposed by the Presidential Commission 5 and the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Risk management cannot and should not be based simply on scientific understandings of how best to manage risks. The incorporation of social preferences, often characterized in terms of the moral and ethical implications that lie at the heart of a democratic society, has to be addressed at some point within the decision-making process. The crucial question is at what stage and how should the scientific and technical assessment be integrated into risk management. Establishing some level of common ground here is still proving difficult as competing interests may gain or lose if the balance of power is altered.

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Royal Society of Chemistry
• Data di pubblicazione: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0854042407
• ISBN 13: 9780854042401
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 170
• Redattore: Hester R. E., Harrison Roy M.