Advances in Risk Analysis – serie

This volume contains the proceedings of the 1986 annual meeting and conference of the Society for Risk Analysis. It provides a detailed view of both mature disciplines and emerging areas within the fields of health, safety, and environmental risk analysis as they existed in 1986. In selecting and organizing topics for this conference, we sought both (i) to identify and include new ideas and application areas that would be of lasting interest to risk analysts and to users of risk analysis results, and (ii) to include innovative methods and applications in established areas of risk analysis. In the three years since the conference, many of the topics presented there for the first time to a broad risk analysis audience have become well developed-and sometimes hotly debated-areas of applied risk research. Several, such as the public health hazards from indoor air pollutants, radon in the home, high-voltage electric fields, and the AIDS epidemic, have been the subjects of headlines since 1986. Older areas, such as hazardous waste site ranking and remediation, air emissions dispersion modeling and exposure assessment, transportation safety, seismic and nuclear risk assessment, and occupational safety in the chemical industry, have continued to receive new treatments and to benefit from advances in quantitative risk assessment methods, as documented in the theoretical and methodological papers in this volume. A theme of the meeting was the importance of new technologies and the new and uncertain risks that they create.

The 1989 Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis dramatically demonstrated one of the most important reasons for having the Society - to bring together people with highly diverse backgrounds and disciplines to assess the common problems of societal and individual risks. The physical scientists emphasized the analytical tools for assessing environmental effects and for modeling risks from engineered systems and other human activities. The health scientists presented numerous methods of analyzing health effects, including the subject of dose-response relationships, especially at low exposure levels - never an easy analysis. The social and political scientists concentrated on issues of risk perception, communication, acceptability, and human touch. Others discussed such issues as cost-benefit analysis and the risk-based approach to decision analysis. Use of risk assessment methods for risk management continued to be a matter of strong opinion and debate. The impacts of state and federal regulations, existing and planned, were assessed in sessions and in luncheon speeches. These impacts show that risk analysis practitioners will have an increasingly important role in the future. They will be challenged to provide clear, easily understood evaluations of risk that are responsive to society's concern for risk, as evidenced in laws and regulations. Of course, the various risk analysis specialties overlapped in domains of interest.

This volume of the series Advances in Risk Analysis consists of papers presented at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis, which was held October 30 through November 2 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. The papers span the gamut of the increasing number of risk assessment topics addressed by the Society since it held its fIrst annual meeting in June 1981, also in Washington DC. Organized to promote interdisciplinary analyses, the Society approaches risks from three broad perspectives: (1) the impact of various risks on the health of the world's populations and on the environment; (2) the social and political implications of specifIc risks, and (3) the management and reduction of risks through the development of a risk analysis methodology and corresponding data bases. The papers included in this volume typify these three approaches and illustrate their interdependence. For example, both cancer and noncancer health risks are examined for a variety of situations that exist within society. The public's perception of risks and the correlation between that perception and the acceptance or nonacceptance of certain risks is also addressed. In addition, the progress to date on predicting and quantifying specifIc risks, including the risks associated with the construction and use of large engineered systems, is reported. Included among the papers are several dealing with recent current issues, such as the impact of California's Proposition 65, hazardous waste disposal, and chemical accidents.

In 1980, a group of scientists from national laboratories, universities, and other research organizations gathered informally in a series of meetings to consider the state of research on risks to health, safety, and the environment. Each scientist had conducted research on the subject. All felt that the traditional disciplines and professional societies to which they belonged were neither ade­ quate nor appropriate for addressing the extraordinarily complex problems of assessing the risks inherent in modern society. The con­ sensus of the group was that a new society was needed to address these problems in a scientific and objective way. From these initial meetings, the Society for Risk Analysis was formed The major aims of the Society for Risk Analysis, as stated in its constitution, are • to promote knowledge and understanding of risk analysis techniques and their applications; • to promote communication and interaction among those engaged in risk analysis; and • to disseminate risk analysis information and promote the advancement of all aspects of risk analysis. Members of the Society are drawn from a variety of disciplines, including the health sciences, engineering, the physical sciences, the humanities, and the behavioral and social sciences. An import­ ant function of the Society is the annual meeting, at which var­ ious aspects of risk analysis are discussed. The first annual meet­ ing, represented by this volume, was the International Workshop on the Analysis of Actual vs.

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.

The growing perception of the public and politicians that life is extremely risky has led to a dramatic and increasing interest in risk analysis. The risks may be very diverse­ as demonstrated by the range of subjects covered at the annual meetings of the Society for Risk Analysis. There is a need to pause and see how well the present approaches are serving the nation. The theme, "Setting National Priorities," which was chosen for the 1987 SRA Annual Meeting, reflects the concern that in dealing with individual kinds of risks, society may be more concerned with the trees than the forest. It is surprising how little attention is being given to the holistic aspects of risk. Who, for instance, is responsible for a national strategy to manage the reduction of health or other risks? Individual agencies have the responsibility for specific patterns of exposure, but these are not integrated and balanced to determine how the nation as a whole can obtain the greatest benefit for the very large investment which is made in risk-related research and analysis.

In recent years public attention has focused on an array of low-probability/high-consequence (LC/HC) events that pose a signif­ icant threat to human health, safety, and the environment. At the same time, public and private sector responsibilities for the assessment and management of such events have grown because of a perceived need to anticipate, prevent, or reduce the risks. In attempting to meet these responsibilities, legislative, judicial, regulatory, and private sector institutions have had to deal with the extraordinarily complex problem of assessing and balancing LP/ HC risks against the costs and ben if its of risk reduction. The need to help society cope with LP/HC events such as nuclear power plant accidents, toxic spills, chemical plant explosions, and transportation accidents has given rise to the development of a new intellectual endeavor: LP/HC risk analysis. The scope and complexity of these analyses require a high degree of cooperative effort on the part of specialists from many f~elds. Analyzing technical, social, and value issues requires the efforts of physicists, biologists, geneticists, statisticians, chemists, engineers, political scientists, sociologists, decision analysts, management scientists, economists, psychologists, ethicists, lawyers, and policy analysts. Included in this volume are papers by authors in each of these disciplines. The papers share in common a focus on one or more of the following questions that are generic to the analysis of LP/HC risks.

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.

This volume of the series Advances in Risk Analysis consists of papers presented at the 1988 Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis, which was held October 30 through November 2 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. The papers span the gamut of the increasing number of risk assessment topics addressed by the Society since it held its fIrst annual meeting in June 1981, also in Washington DC. Organized to promote interdisciplinary analyses, the Society approaches risks from three broad perspectives: (1) the impact of various risks on the health of the world's populations and on the environment; (2) the social and political implications of specifIc risks, and (3) the management and reduction of risks through the development of a risk analysis methodology and corresponding data bases. The papers included in this volume typify these three approaches and illustrate their interdependence. For example, both cancer and noncancer health risks are examined for a variety of situations that exist within society. The public's perception of risks and the correlation between that perception and the acceptance or nonacceptance of certain risks is also addressed. In addition, the progress to date on predicting and quantifying specifIc risks, including the risks associated with the construction and use of large engineered systems, is reported. Included among the papers are several dealing with recent current issues, such as the impact of California's Proposition 65, hazardous waste disposal, and chemical accidents.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 1986 annual meeting and conference of the Society for Risk Analysis. It provides a detailed view of both mature disciplines and emerging areas within the fields of health, safety, and environmental risk analysis as they existed in 1986. In selecting and organizing topics for this conference, we sought both (i) to identify and include new ideas and application areas that would be of lasting interest to risk analysts and to users of risk analysis results, and (ii) to include innovative methods and applications in established areas of risk analysis. In the three years since the conference, many of the topics presented there for the first time to a broad risk analysis audience have become well developed-and sometimes hotly debated-areas of applied risk research. Several, such as the public health hazards from indoor air pollutants, radon in the home, high-voltage electric fields, and the AIDS epidemic, have been the subjects of headlines since 1986. Older areas, such as hazardous waste site ranking and remediation, air emissions dispersion modeling and exposure assessment, transportation safety, seismic and nuclear risk assessment, and occupational safety in the chemical industry, have continued to receive new treatments and to benefit from advances in quantitative risk assessment methods, as documented in the theoretical and methodological papers in this volume. A theme of the meeting was the importance of new technologies and the new and uncertain risks that they create.