Environmental Risk Management Authority

Environmental quality standards for chemical substances in groundwater and soil are important for many soil quality decisions. Examples include emission reduction measures during the marketing authorization of chemicals, soil and land use decision making and risk management, as well as soil remediation. 

The aim of PRIO is to facilitate the assessment of health and environmental risks of chemicals and identify the need for risk reduction by environmental managers, purchasers or product developers. To achieve this, PRIO provides a guide for decision-making that can be used in setting risk reduction priorities. PRIO was developed in co-operation with other authorities, industry organisations and companies within different sectors. 

This entry was initially written while the author (Dr. S. Hwang) held a National Research Council Research Associateship Award at the National Risk Management Research Laboratory of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ada, Oklahoma, U.S.A. 

Ecological risk assessment is an integral part of theRI/FS process, which is designed to support risk management decision-making for Superfund sites. (The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 [CERCLA, or Superfund], as amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 [SARA], authorizes the USEPA to protect public health and welfare, and the environment from the release or potential release of any hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.) The RI component of the process characterizes the nature and extent of contamination at a hazardous waste site and estimates risks to human health and the environment posed by contaminants at the site. The FS component... 

The permanent network proposal puts no restrictions whatsoever on membership of the future network. It would ideally embrace all interested stakeholders dealing with emerging substances - whether in studying their occurrence and effects or risk assessment and risk management. Still, the key members are expected to be mainly i) competent authorities/reference laboratories, i.e. institutes/organisations designated by the competent authorities at the national level to offer technical and scientific support in specific fields related to environmental protection ii) research centres and academia iii) industry stakeholders and iv) government institutions and standardisation bodies. 

Jan Hayes has twenty-five years experience in safety and risk management. Her current activities cover academia, consnlting, and regulation. She holds a Senior Research Fellow appointment at the Anstralian National University where she is Program Leader for the social science research activities of the Energy Pipelines Co-operative Research Centre. Dr. Hayes is a member of the Advisory Board of the Australian National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority. 

The Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority requirements regarding acceptance criteria and their use are presented explicitly in the regulations. Section 6 Acceptance criteria for major accident risk and environmental risk of the NPD s management regulations requires the operator to define acceptance criteria for major accident and environmental risks, see NPSA (2002). RAC shallbe defined for personal risk to workers and to third party, loss of main safety functions, and environmental effects from the facility. 

Within companies there are likely to be cross-business effects of risk. There are varying areas of risk, such as business risk, market risk, operational risk, and reputational risk and there are likely to be multiple domains of compliance risk. For example, there may be environmental, health and safety, tax, consumer, planning, and competition regulations to meet. Moreover these may cut across each other and in so doing create more complex sources of risk. Indeed, regulatory authorities themselves may have individual requirements which create risk management problems in other domains. It is for reasons... 

What was lacking a decade ago in terms of process principles and examples has now been supplied by David Reay, Colin Ramshaw, and Adam Harvey in this book on Process Intensification (PI). The authors chronicle the history of PI with emphasis on heat and mass transfer. For the business manager and project manager the PI Overview presents the value proposition for PI including capital reduction (smaller, cheaper), safety (reduced volume), environmental impact, and energy reduction. In addition, PI offers the promise of improved raw material yields. The authors deal with the obstacles to implanenting PI, chief of which is risk management. 

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