Decision making congressional

CRARM (1997). Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management. Risk Assessment and Risk Management in Regulatory Decision Making, Final Report (Presidential/Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management, Washington). 

The actual standard-setting process is complicated and typically protracted. In current practice, key elements are the preparation of a criteria document by the EPA staff with substantial input from scientists outside the agency. The criteria document is reviewed by the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CAS AC), which was created in response to congressional action in 1977. The intent of the process of review, and typically of revision, is to achieve a criteria document that C ASAC views as scientifically adequate for regulatory decision making. The most recent criteria document, Air Quality Criteria for Particulate Matter (23), consists of three volumes about 6-in. thick. It represents an encyclopedia of current information on PM. 

In addition, Congress conducted hearings under the US House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology. The Congressional Report, published in October 1986, placed the blame on people making poor technical decisions about the 0-rings over a period of years top NASA and contractor personnel who failed to act decisively to solve the increasingly serious anomalies in the SRB joints. 

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