Office Of The Science Advisor Staff Paper Risk Assessment Principles Practices

This book outlines the strategies used in the investigation, characterization, management, and restoration and remediation for various contaminated sites. It draws on real-world examples from across the globe to illustrate remediation techniques and discusses their applicability. It provides guidance for the successful corrective action assessment and response programs for any type of contaminated land problem, and at any location. The systematic protocols presented will aid environmental professionals in managing contaminated land and associated problems more efficiently. This new edition adds twelve new chapters, and is fully updated and expanded throughout.

Risk assessment has become a dominant public policy tool for making choices, based on limited resources, to protect public health and the environment. It has been instrumental to the mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as other federal agencies in evaluating public health concerns, informing regulatory and technological decisions, prioritizing research needs and funding, and in developing approaches for cost-benefit analysis. However, risk assessment is at a crossroads. Despite advances in the field, risk assessment faces a number of significant challenges including lengthy delays in making complex decisions; lack of data leading to significant uncertainty in risk assessments; and many chemicals in the marketplace that have not been evaluated and emerging agents requiring assessment. Science and Decisions makes practical scientific and technical recommendations to address these challenges. This book is a complement to the widely used 1983 National Academies book, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government (also known as the Red Book). The earlier book established a framework for the concepts and conduct of risk assessment that has been adopted by numerous expert committees, regulatory agencies, and public health institutions. The new book embeds these concepts within a broader framework for risk-based decision-making. Together, these are essential references for those working in the regulatory and public health fields.

Risk assessments are often used by the federal government to estimate the risk the public may face from such things as exposure to a chemical or the potential failure of an engineered structure, and they underlie many regulatory decisions. Last January, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a draft bulletin for all federal agencies, which included a new definition of risk assessment and proposed standards aimed at improving federal risk assessments. This National Research Council report, written at the request of OMB, evaluates the draft bulletin and supports its overall goals of improving the quality of risk assessments. However, the report concludes that the draft bulletin is "fundamentally flawed" from a scientific and technical standpoint and should be withdrawn. Problems include an overly broad definition of risk assessment in conflict with long-established concepts and practices, and an overly narrow definition of adverse health effects-one that considers only clinically apparent effects to be adverse, ignoring other biological changes that could lead to health effects. The report also criticizes the draft bulletin for focusing mainly on human health risk assessments while neglecting assessments of technology and engineered structures.

"Unmaking the Bomb investigates the politics of waste, exposure, and cleanup at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a former weapons complex in Washington State. Once the heart of American plutonium production, Hanford is now engaged in the nation's largest environmental remediation effort, managing toxic materials that will long outlast their regulatory containers. This book blends ethnographic research with personal narrative to examine cleanup's administrative frames and the stories that exceed them. It describes how the body-at-risk became a waste management tool, and how reckoning with contamination informs the very definitions of health and hazard in the United States"--

The presence of chemicals in our environment is a subject of intense interest owing to the many potential adverse health effects to humans following exposure to these chemicals. The principles and practices of risk assessment are used to assess the associated health risks to provide a scientific and health basis for guidance or regulatory standards development and risk management decision making for public health protection. This book compiles, discusses, and presents cutting-edge research data and methodology in performing risk assessment of some major chemicals of concern in our environment. It also discusses the complexity of the scientific databases, the available and updated methodology, emerging issues, limitations in knowledge and methods, considerations of developmental and age sensitivities, use of defaults, case samples on results in risk assessment and risk management, and current and future perspectives. The editors are prominent in the field of environmental toxicology, risk assessment, and chemical regulations. This book will appeal to those interested in evaluating the human health effects of exposure to chemicals in the environment and the associated assessments and findings.