Dealing with Uncertainty: From Health‐Risk Assessment to Environmental Decision Making

To provide theoretical support for the protection of dispersed drinking water sources of groundwater, we need to accurately evaluate the time and scope of groundwater pollution hazards to human health. This helps the decision-making process for remediation of polluted soil and groundwater in service stations. In this study, we conducted such an evaluation by coupling numerical modeling with a health risk assessment. During the research, soil and groundwater samples were collected and analyzed for 20 pollutants. Fifty-six percent of the heavy contaminants and 100% of the organic contaminants exhibited maximum values at the location of the oil depot. Gray correlation analysis showed that the correlation between background samples and soil underlying the depot was 0.375–0.567 (barely significant to insignificant). The correlation between the reference sequence of other points was 0.950–0.990 (excellent correlation). The correlation of environmental impact after oil depot leakage followed the order: organic pollutants > heavy metals > inorganic pollutants. The groundwater simulation status and predictions indicated that non-carcinogenic health risks covered 25,462 m2 at the time of investigation, and were predicted to extend to 29,593 m2 after five years and to 39,873 m2 after 10 years. Carcinogenic health risks covered 21,390 m2 at the time of investigation, and were predicted to extend to 40,093 m2 after five years and to 53,488 m2 after 10 years. This study provides theoretical support for the protection of a dispersed drinking water source such as groundwater, and also helps the decision-making process for groundwater and soil environment improvement.

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Science-policy in environmental and health risk assessment: if we cannot do without, can we do better?

Human & Experimental Toxicology ◽

10.1191/0960327106ht582oa ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 25 (1) ◽

pp. 29-43 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

P F Ricci ◽

L A Cox ◽

T R MacDonald

Keyword(s):

Risk Assessment ◽

Decision Making ◽

Risk Management ◽

Health Risk ◽

Human Health ◽

Empirical Evidence ◽

Health Risk Assessment ◽

Science Policy ◽

The Us ◽

Us Epa

How can empirical evidence of adverse effects from exposure to noxious agents, which is often incomplete and uncertain, be used most appropriately to protect human health? We examine several important questions on the best uses of empirical evidence in regulatory risk management decision–making raised by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s science–policy concerning uncertainty and variability in human health risk assessment. In our view, the US EPA (and other agencies that have adopted similar views of risk management) can often improve decision–making by decreasing reliance on default values and assumptions, particularly when causation is uncertain. This can be achieved by more fully exploiting decision–theoretic methods and criteria that explicitly account for uncertain, possibly conflicting scientific beliefs and that can be fully studied by advocates and adversaries of a policy choice, in administrative decision–making involving risk assessment. The substitution of decision–theoretic frameworks for default assumption–driven policies also allows stakeholder attitudes toward risk to be incorporated into policy debates, so that the public and risk managers can more explicitly identify the roles of risk–aversion or other attitudes toward risk and uncertainty in policy recommendations. Decision theory provides a sound scientific way explicitly to account for new knowledge and its effects on eventual policy choices. Although these improvements can complicate regulatory analyses, simplifying default assumptions can create substantial costs to society and can prematurely cut off consideration of new scientific insights (e.g., possible beneficial health effects from exposure to sufficiently low ‘hormetic’ doses of some agents). In many cases, the administrative burden of applying decision–analytic methods is likely to be more than offset by improved effectiveness of regulations in achieving desired goals. Because many foreign jurisdictions adopt US EPA reasoning and methods of risk analysis, it may be especially valuable to incorporate decision–theoretic principles that transcend local differences among jurisdictions.

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