Hazardous Environments uncertainty

As Selber (1999) points cjut, researchers in technical communication have resisted rationalistic approaches that are blatantly system centered. Thus, despite what seems like a natural alliance in investigating the nature of deliberation, communication, and probabilistic reasoning in the context of high levels of ethical and political uncertainty, rhetorical theorists have not taken advantage of the insights and research findings of risk specialists to understand the nature of decision making in uncertain, dynamic, and hazardous environments. 

Acknowledging Uncertainty Rethinking Rhetoric in a Hazardous Environment... 

This chapter provides a brief overview of the most important sources of rhetorical uncertainty in technical documentation in the workplace the dynamic uncertainty of hazardous environments the variability and unreliability of human performance the uncertainty of what one agency calls premium data uncertainty in social structures and organizations and the rhetorical incompleteness of any single viewpoint. As the examples in this chapter demonstrate, the material and institutional uncertainty of hazardous environments affects documentation practices at all levels. But documentation practices can also contribute to uncertainty, particularly when writers depend too heavily on agency conventions to structure recommendations and conclusions. 

Risk specialists have developed. sophisticated mathematical models to describe the methodological and scientific uncertainty in regulatory risk assessments. In this chapter, I focus on those aspects of uncertainty that are most affected by documentation practices in hazardous environments. To set the stage for this discussion, I describe the problem of uncertainty at the highest level of exigence imminent danger. 

But the uncertainties of wording and interpretation also reflect the material, geographic, and institutional uncertainties of a hazardous environment. 

Rhetorical theory was not developed to help individuals document the dy namic uncertainty of a hazardous environment. 

For rhetoricians, the profound uncertainty of hazardous environments ultimately challenges the conventions of technical writing in the workplace and causes us to rethink the fundamental assumptions that guide rhetorical practice. By identifying areas of uncertainty, social scientists can help scientists discover new areas for research and new questions for analysis. When rhetoricians articulate the uncertainty in scientific models and methods, they too help scientists discover new questions for analysis. What kinds of war-... 

The physical structure of a coal mine provides a metaphor for the rhetorical uncertainty of documentation in a hazardous environment. 

While the complexity of this collective body of observation and experience may improve the quality of risk decision making, the sheer volume of information creates difficult rhetorical problems when individuals must determine a course of action. If individuals attempt to document events from too many incommensurate viewpoints, they can easily become overwhelmed and overcautious in the face of risk. Individuals who limit their documentation to a single viewpoint may face less anxiety, but they will not have sufficient resources to operate in conditions of profound uncertainty. Complexity can provide decision makers with the fullest account of hazardous environments. But decision makers must have the tools to sort through complexity to isolate and weigh how each individual factor contributes to risk. 

As this chapter argues, anomalous behaviors can be viewed as problems of focus and attention—the consequence of the uncertainty and complexity of work in hazardous environments. In each case, workers focused on a single task placed themselves in danger because they failed to turn their attention to other aspects of their work. ... 

Ultimately, however, the burden will fall upon writers (trained and untrained) to develop new documentation practices that can balance the tension between liability and flexibility, formal standards and the realities of day-to-day uncertainty in local sites. Before we can create new forms of documentation, we must reexamine the fit between current documentation practices and the uncertainties of work in hazardous environments. 

There is some uncertainty about the potential presence of metal in the TCE-contaminated soil of Area 2. If metal concentrations of concern are present, only Alternatives 2 and 5 would protect against direct contact and further groundwater contamination through a cap and incineration, respectively. Incineration of metal-contaminated soil may result in a hazardous waste residue, which would have to be disposed of in a hazardous waste landfill. Alternatives 3 and 4 rely on vapor extraction and would not lower risks from metal to human health or the environment. 

Risk assessment starts with risk identification, a systematic use of available information to identify hazards (i.e., events or other conditions that have the potential to cause harm). Information can be from a variety of sources including stakeholders, historical data, information from the literature, and mathematical or scientific analyses. Risk analysis is then conducted to estimate the degree of risk associated with the identified hazards. This is estimated based on the likelihood of occurrence and resultant severity of harm. In some risk management tools, the ability to detect the hazard may also be considered. If the hazard is readily detectable, this may be considered a factor in the overall risk assessment. Risk evaluation determines if the risk is acceptable based on specified criteria. In a quality system environment, criteria would include impact on the overall performance of the quality system and the quality attributes of the finished product. The value of the risk assessment depends on how robust the data used in the assessment process is judged to be. The risk assessment process should take into account assumptions and reasonable sources of uncertainty. Risk assessment activities should be documented. 

The production and use of PFOS has been greatly curtailed since 2000. Thus, if concentrations of PFOS in the environment decline, the hazard posed to Great Lakes biota should also decrease and not reach critical concentrations. However, there are some uncertainties in this simple hazard assess-... 

Many questions still exist concerning the physico-chemical and vital factors affecting biomineral composition in the modern environment. Because of these uncertainties, it is hazardous to use chemical, mineralogical, and isotopic data on... 

Aldenberg T, Jaworska JS. 2000. Uncertainty of the hazardous concentration and fraction affected for normal species distributions. Ecotoxicol Environ Safety 46 1-18. 

There are a large number of different methods used for bench-scale assessment of combustion toxicity, and the applicability of test data to lire hazard assessment is not always clear. Obviously, toxic potency data should not be used in isolation but should either be a part of a classification scheme or as part of the input to lire risk and lire safety engineering assessments. It is important that uncertainty or confidence limits should be used with toxic potency data, because they are often relatively large. Fire effluent toxic potency does not have a unique value but is a function of the material and the fire conditions, particularly temperature and oxygen availability in the fire zone, and also the fire environment (enclosure, geometry, and ventilation). To assess the fire hazard, toxic potency data must be relevant to the end use fire situation, and the fire condition, which can be defined using the ISO classification of fire stages. 

It is quite clear that traditional risk assessment and risk management approaches are not working sufficiently well in the field of chemicals policy, in particular not in cases of high uncertainty. The traditional approach could hardly deal with the early chemical problems, characterised by evident impacts such as acute effects, and is even less effective in the present situation, with globalised flows of articles that contain hazardous chemicals and the resulting complex chemical cocktail, which may cause diffuse but significant adverse effects on human health and the environment. 

The exact nature of the environmental hazards generated by the release of various synthetic chemicals into the environment is under constant debate. There is little doubt that this debate will continue until science unequivocally resolves the uncertainties in toxicological data (exposure, fate, and transport) and risk analyses. 

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