Risk management differences

How does chemical risk management differ between the Member States and why ... 

Nga LT, Paul AL, Thomas AB (2000) Chemical and radiation enviromnenttil risk management differences, commonalities and challenges. Risk Anal 20 163-172... 

Risk management differs from risk assessment it refers to the choices made in consideration of the potential risks and technical and socioeconomic factors that influence the risks and benefits. 

A problem exists in the perception of risk because the experts and lay people s views differ. The experts usually base their assessment on mortality rates, while the lay people s fears are based on "outrage" factors. In order to help solve tliis problem, in tlie future, risk nimuigcrs must work to make truly serious hazards more outrageous. One example is tlie ongoing concern for tlie risk involved in cigarette smoke. Another effort must be made to decrease tlie public s concern with low to modest hazards, i.e., risk managers must diminish "outrage" in these areas. In addition, people must be treated fairly and honestly. 

Figure 4.34. The confidence limits of the mean of 2 to 10 repeat determinations are given for three forms of risk management. In panel A the difference between the true mean (103.8, circle ) and the limit L is such that for n = 4 the upper confidence limit (CLu, thick line) is exactly on the upper specification limit (105) the compound risk that at least one of the repeat measurements yi >105 rises from 23 n = 2) to 72% (n = 10). In panel B the mean is far enough from the SLj/ so that the CLu (circle) coincides with it over the whole range of n. In panel C the mean is chosen so that the risk of at least one repeat measurement being above the SLu is never higher than 0.05 (circle, corresponds to the dashed lines in panels A and B).

In this phase of the risk assessment, the validity and reliability of conclusions and advice to risk managers depend on the quality, reliability, and relevance of available exposure data. Therefore it is necessary to (1) critically review the facts from food composition tables and the reasons for differences reported by and within countries, (2) consider the way foods are categorized and thus made comparable (or not) in food consumption surveys, and (3) explore how to refine assessments as more information becomes available. ... 

Figure 7.1 is adapted from the red book (actual title Risk Assessment in the Federal Government Managing the Process ). The committee offered this figure as a depiction of the broad framework under which the three major activities necessary to protect public health from the hazardous properties of environmental chemicals (very broadly defined) - research, risk assessment, and risk management -should be organized. The committee further emphasized that the three involve quite discrete sets of analytical undertakings, and serve different purposes, so that efforts should be made to reduce the chance of inappropriate influence of one upon another. Thus, for example, risk... 

This is confusing. Why don t risk assessors simply decide what level of exposure is safe for each chemical, and risk managers simply put into effect mechanisms to ensure that industry reaches the safe level Why should different sources of risk be treated differently Why apply a no risk standard to certain substances (e.g., those intentionally introduced into food, such as aspartame) and an apparently more lenient risk-henefit standard to unwanted contaminants of food such as PCBs, methylmercury, and aflatoxins (which the FDA applies under another section of food law) Why allow technological limitations to influence any decision about health What is this risk-henefit balancing nonsense Aren t some of these statutes simply sophisticated mechanisms to allow polluters to expose people to risk ... 

Because fire protection is an important aspect of risk management and loss prevention, this Guideline will benefit many different people within an organization. 

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report Intolerable Risk Pesticides in Our Children s Food focused on the increased risk of the adverse effects of pesticides on children. This was in part because of the smaller size of the child relative to the adult and because of different food consumption practices. Relative to their size, children eat, drink, and breathe more than adults in part because they are growing. The use and regulation of pesticides illustrate the complexities of risk analysis and risk management and the difficulties in determining an acceptable level of exposure with acceptable risks. In the United States approximately 1 billion pounds of pesticides (with about 600 different active ingredients) are used annually in the agricultural sector, and worldwide approximately 4 billion pounds are used. There are a range of human health and environmental health effects associated with the use of pesticides. 

Risk management is the process of deciding what to do to reduce a known or suspected risk. Risk management balances the various community demands with the scientific information generated from the risk assessment. Public perception of risk is also considered. Table 19.2 characterizes some of the factors that influence perception of risk. An individual s perception of risk is sometimes very different from a risk... 

Questions 2 and 3 imply a choice between expressing effects in terms of magnitude, frequency, and certainty. In practice, the assessment endpoint may often need to be dehned in terms of 2 or 3 of these dimensions. For example, it may be desirable to estimate the proportion of species (frequency) that will experience different levels of mortality (magnitude), and to provide confidence limits (certainty). Indeed, the risk manager s questions may imply an assessment endpoint with more than 3 dimensions, for example, if it is desired to express frequency in terms of space (e.g., number of hectares) and time (proportion of years). The dimensionality of the assessment endpoint will have major implications for all aspects of the analysis and for communication of results, so it is essential to discuss it carefully with the risk manager at the outset to ensure it meets their needs. 

It is essential to have a clear vision of roles of the different parties to risk assessment, including risk assessors, risk managers, and other stakeholders, and to ensure they interact efficiently throughout the process (National Research Council 1983,1996 US Presidential/ Congressional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management 1997). 

Bnrmaster DE, Thompson KM. 1995. Backcalculating cleanup targets in probabilistic risk assessments when the acceptability of cancer risk is defined under different risk management policies. Hnman Ecol Risk Assess 1 101-120. 

Risk managers may need assessors to separate variability and uncertainty explicitly, if they have different implications for decision making. For example, 100% certainty that 10% of individuals will die is likely to have different implications from a 10% chance that 100% of individuals will die. 

Furthermore, separating variability and uncertainty can help risk managers and assessors to decide whether to collect additional information and, if so, on which parameters. This is because uncertainty can be reduced by obtaining additional information, but variability cannot. If there is little uncertainty, then the effects are already well characterized and obtaining further data will make little difference to the assessment outcome. If there is much uncertainty, then priority should be given to obtaining better information about those parameters from which it mostly derives. 

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