Lester B. Lave - Böcker

The subject of this volume--uncertainties in risk assessment and management--reflects an important theme in health, safety, and environ­ mental decision making. MOst technological hazards are characterized by substantial uncertainty. Recent examples include nuclear waste disposal, acid rain, asbestos in schools, carcinogens in food, and hazardous waste. realing with such uncertainty is arguably the most difficult and challeng­ ing task facing risk assessors and managers today. Four primary sources of uncertainty in risk assessment and management can be identified: (1) uncertainties about definitions; (2) uncertainties about scientific facts; (3) uncertainties about risk perceptions and atti­ tudes; and (4) uncertainties about values. Uncertainties about definitions derive primarily from disagreements about the meaning and interpretation of key concepts, such as probability. Uncertainties about scientific facts derive primarily from disagreements about failure modes, the probability and magnitude of adverse health or environmental consequences, cause and effect relationships, dose-response relationships, and exposure patterns. Uncertainties about risk perceptions and attitudes derive primarily from disagreements about what constitutes a significant or acceptable level of risk. Uncertainties about values derive primarily from disagreements about the desirability or worth of alternative risk management actions or conse­ quences. The papers in this volume address each of these sources of uncertainty from a variety of perspectives. Reflecting the broad scope of risk assess­ ment and risk management research, the papers include contributions from safety engineers, epidemiologists, toxicologists, chemists, biostatisticians, biologists, decision analysts, economists,psychologists, political scien­ tists, sociologists, ethicists, and lawyers.

This is a collection of papers presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis. As always seems to occur at these meetings, the discussion was lively, the sessions were filled, and people complained about not being able to hear all the papers they wanted to because of concurrent sessions. If ever someone is in charge of a meeting, I wish them the good luck to have it be one for the Society for Risk Analysis. While I was responsible for the meeting, it could not have taken place without the efforts of the general chairman, Alan Moshissi. The program committee was chaired by Janice Longstreth, and included Lee Abramson and Vincent Covello. Together we assembled disparate papers into reasonably coherent sessions, prodded authors into getting us manuscrLpts on time, and dealt with all the last minute changes that are required for a major meeting. The Washington chapter of the Society for Risk Analysis hosted the meeting. Dr. Longstreth was president of the chapter during this fateful year and deserves a great deal of thanks for her organizational skills and efforts. Rick Cothern, Jerry Chandler, Kathleen Knox, Sue Perlin, and Paul Price played major roles in organ1z1ng the meeting and making it run smoothly. Special thanks go to Richard J. Burk, Jr. , Executive Secretary of the Society, and his staff for handling the logistics.

Upon competition of a ten year research project which analyzes the effect of air pollution and death rates in US cities, Lester B. Lave and Eugene P. Seskin conclude that the mortality rate in the US could shrink by seven percent with a similar if not greater decline in disease incidence if industries followed EPA regulations in cutting back on certain pollutant emissions. The authors claim that this reduction is sufficient to add one year to average life expectancy. Originally published in 1977.

Environmental life cycle assessment is often thought of as cradle to grave and therefore as the most complete accounting of the environmental costs and benefits of a product or service. However, as anyone who has done an environmental life cycle assessment knows, existing tools have many problems: data is difficult to assemble and life cycle studies take months of effort. A truly comprehensive analysis is prohibitive, so analysts are often forced to simply ignore many facets of life cycle impacts. But the focus on one aspect of a product or service can result in misleading indications if that aspect is benign while other aspects pollute or are otherwise unsustainable. This book summarizes the EIO-LCA method, explains its use in relation to other life cycle assessment models, and provides sample applications and extensions of the model into novel areas. A final chapter explains the free, easy-to-use software tool available on a companion website. (www.eiolca.net) The software tool provides a wealth of data, summarizing the current U.S. economy in 500 sectors with information on energy and materials use, pollution and greenhouse gas discharges, and other attributes like associated occupational deaths and injuries. The joint project of twelve faculty members and over 20 students working together over the past ten years at the Green Design Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, the EIO-LCA has been applied to a wide range of products and services. It will prove useful for research, industry, and in economics, engineering, or interdisciplinary classes in green design.