Risk assessment public decision factors

But at the same time the regulation drafters are faced with the still more difficult job of doing a risk evaluation. That is, they must recommend public policy decisions as to the acceptable levels of risks for a variety of hazardous waste activities, e.g., acceptable minimums for the efficiency of destruction of hazardous wastes by incineration. In principle, this process may be not unlike the decisions made by a banker about a potential loan, or an insurance underwriter in setting the rate for an insurance policy a risk assessment is made, and an appropriate safety margin is factored into the interest rate or the policy premium to arrive at an acceptable level of risk for the individual case (but based on experience and projections for a large number of cases). 

During the past few years considerable debate has focused on the uncertainties of risk assessments, the concept of making prudent assumptions, the concept of upper limit estimates, 9551 confidence levels and other factors relating to the uncertainty of the data. Despite these debates, it has been necessaiy to make many decisions in both company risk management practices and the public regulatory arena. 

---