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Introduction:
Emerging Issues in Hazard Management
ROBERT M. WHITE
During the 1970s, an environmental ethic that differed from the pre-
WorldWarII ethic of utility dominated governmental, industrial, and public
approaches to the environment. The new ethic embraced the philosophy that
we must learn to live more closely in harmony with the natural environment
and that our activities must foster that harmony.
Institutionalization of the new environmental ethic was fueled by the
conviction that this harmony could be achieved through regulation and strict
enforcement (Ruckleshaus, 19851. Federal legislation designed to prevent
and remedy environmental pollution was quickly augmented by the passage
of state and local laws. These laws manifested the deep public concern for
the preservation of environmental quality, the maintenance of reasonable
ecological balances in nature, and the protection of human health. Implicit
was the belief that, in light ofthe general social benefits that would accrue to
all, industry could accommodate the costs of environmental controls during
the period of vigorous economic growth that characterized the 1960s and
early 1970s. Implicit also was the assumption that values of human health
and environmental protection took precedence over other social values.
Federal, state, and local legislation led to the creation of government
agencies charged with the responsibility for issuing and enforcing environ-
mental regulations. Groups concerned about environmental quality stimu-
lated legislative bodies and agencies to develop new environmental initia-
tives, and industry in turn developed new environmental capabilities to
respond to the new regulatory environment.
In the changed economic world of the late 1970s, however, some of these
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ROBERTM. WHITE
environmental policies became foci of considerable debate. The realization
spread that environmental protection is not costless to society and that the
allocation of increasingly scarce regulatory and economic resources war-
ranted reconsideration of the underlying approaches to assessing and man-
aging the environment.
We are now in the midst of a national debate about how to assess and
manage the quality of the environment and hazards to human health: some
urge a rebalancing of conflicting values in arriving at appropriate human
health and environmental goals. This view recognizes that the world is
fraught with irreducible risks and suggests reassessment of the extent to
which we may choose to forgo reducing some risks in order to achieve
alternative goals.
Public debate over the appropriate balance in environmental regulation
has been intensified by recent hazard spectaculars such as Three Mile Island,
Love Canal, and Bhopal; governmental and private attempts to prevent and
manage such hazards have met with recurrent criticism. The adoption of a
new approach to assessing and managing the quality of the environment and
hazards to human health is made doubly difficult by the fact that as regula-
to~ and economic resources grow scarce, conflicts over distributive equity
become acute. To resolve these conflicts and achieve a rational response to
environmental hazards, we need to establish a participatory framework that
includes those responsible for industrial or economic activities that result in
hazards, those responsible for the protection of human health and the preser-
vation of environmental quality, and the public at interest.
The papers in this volume define some important issues in hazard manage-
ment that are emerging during this national reexamination of our environ-
mental policies. The authors urge us to recognize that successful manage-
ment of technological hazards increasingly depends on resolution of these
issues.
Symposium contributors have identified three principal themes that reso-
nate throughout current public debate about technological hazards. Each of
these themes is developed in one of three parts of this volume. Part 1
addresses the question of how to regulate hazards those arising from
chronic, low-level exposures and from high-consequence hazards that are
estimated to have a low probability of occurrence-when science is unable to
estimate or assign causation for the possible consequences of such hazards.
Papers by Alvin M. Weinberg, Victor P. Bond, Chris G. Whipple, and
Ronald Bayer constitute this section.
In Part 2, Eula gingham, Daniel S. Hoffman, Peter W. Huber, Roger E.
Kasperson, and Howard C. Kunreuther present several-sometimes
conflicting perspectives on fairness in the distribution of the risks and
benefits of potentially hazardous technologies.
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lNTRODUCTlON
3
Part 3 presents a set of practical lessons and cautions about managing
hazardous technologies. Victoria J. Tschinkel, John A. Klacsmann, John F.
Ahearne, and Robert W. Kates describe the ways in which issues raised in
the first two parts of the volume are either resolved or, if unresolved, serve as
impediments to effective hazard management.
The authors presented in this volume raise certain important issues that cut
across the three major topics. The first relates to the influence of the value
system of the expert on technical judgments about risk and the consequences
for scientific credibility and regulatory policy.
Weinberg discusses situations in which expert judgments about scientific
truth are significantly affected by the value system of the scientist. Bayer
details the evolution of the occupational standard for airborne lead and, in
doing so, describes how conflict among expert witnesses can derive from
value-centered interpretations of inconclusive data. Similarly, Whipple
argues that the use of conservative risk-assessment assumptions by scientists
in regulatory agencies can derive from scientists' personal values and not
from sound data bases. Finally, Ahearne cautions scientists and engineers
against advocacy, which, in his view, erodes public trust in the neutrality of
expert witnesses and inhibits informed public debate about hazards. He calls
upon scientists, engineers, and regulators to consider when and to what
extent such cautions are appropriate.
A second issue is the allocation of resources devoted to managing techno-
logical hazards. While it is important to reduce scientific uncertainty about
risk posed by a particular hazard before regulating that hazard, both Wein-
berg and Tschinkel suggest that we cannot establish a dictum that we should
always do so. Some risks are not now, and may never be, amenable to
reliable estimation by scientific inquiry. For other risks, certainty in estima-
tion sufficient to warrant a scientifically ironclad basis for regulation may
come only at great cost. Society may, therefore, in some cases wish to
impose regulator burdens that are not justified by definitive scientific evi-
dence, or may permit potentially hazardous technologies to exist without
rP.sn~ln~ion if the benefits of doing so outweigh the consequences of the
~ `~45, ~.,.~_.~4 I. ._ ~ _^A_~^ TV ~ ~ _~ each= _ _ _
potential hazard.
Whipple suggests that society must also now consider the allocation of
regulatory resources among technological hazards. He explains that our
current focus on regulating one hazard at a time prevents us from setting
priorities among hazards and maximizing benefits to human health and the
environment. Tschinkel describes how the Florida Department of Environ-
mental Regulation allocates regulatory resources and sets priorities for haz-
ards.
Finally, Kasperson and Kunreuther suggest that society must consider
how best to allocate resources between preventing hazards and providing
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4
ROBERT M. WHITE
compensation to the victims of hazards. These authors advocate alternative
approaches: Kunreuther argues that compensation can be substituted for risk
reduction, and he provides a framework in which fair compensation for the
siting of potentially hazardous technological facilities can be achieved.
Kasperson, however, argues that compensation does not restore the potential
victims of a hazard to the condition that existed before they were placed at
possible risk. He concludes that fairness requires that a hazard first be
reduced to the lowest practicable level before one attempts to compensate
potential victims for the remaining hazard.
A final issue that arises in many of the papers in this volume is the question
of what factors lead to successful and unsuccessful experiences in hazard
management. Weinberg and Whipple suggest that unsuccessful hazard man-
agers fail to recognize when the scientific basis for estimating the risk of a
potential hazard is inadequate. Consequently, these managers fail to elect
regulatory options that do not depend on specific estimates of health or
environmental consequences as justification for their actions.
gingham and Kasperson suggest that unsuccessful hazard managers fail to
consider the distribution of risks and benefits that are associated with alter-
native approaches to the hazard. These managers generally also fail to
designate equitable risk distribution as one of several criteria used in select-
ing among alternative approaches.
Huber, Hoffman, and Klacsmann suggest that unsuccessful hazard man-
agers fail to compensate victims or potential victims of technological haz-
ards in a way that is fair to responsible parties as well as to victims. Huber
describes a shift in the focus of U.S. tort law from "private" to "public"
risks. He attributes this shift to increasing judicial reliance on uncertain data
in assigning causation for particular outcomes to specific hazards. Huber
argues that judicial compensation is frequently inefficient and inequitable
for hazard victims and responsible parties because of this shift in tort law,
and he suggests that compensation would be more equitable if such decisions
were made by an administrative agency.
Finally, Kasperson and Klacsmann suggest that unsuccessful hazard man-
agers fail to develop a participatory framework for managing technological
hazards so that information about perceived risk can be effectively shared
among regulators, scientists and engineers, industry representatives, and the
public.
The Symposium on Hazards: Technology and Fairness, from which this
volume is derived, provided an opportunity for members of the academic,
regulatory, and industrial communities involved in various aspects of man-
aging technological hazards to discuss subjects of common interest. From
these discussions came suggestions for activities that would define and
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lNTRODUCTlON
s
resolve emerging issues in hazard management. Suggestions made by the
authors in this volume are presented below.
Potentially useful toxicity information on many of the chemicals that are
screened each year by corporations could be made more generally available
to regulatory agencies. Mechanisms for doing this in a way that also pre-
serves the proprietary nature of the information should be explored.
The principle of de minimis may have broad applicability in environmen-
tal standard setting and warrants further discussion. This principle states that
for naturally occurring insults to the human environment, regulators need
concern themselves with exposures due to human activity only when they
exceed the natural, background exposure. Discussion of the scientific basis
of de minimis, however, must also address the concern that additional man-
made exposures, even when smaller than background levels, may produce a
total exposure level that exceeds some threshold of resistance. Thus, new or
more severe health and environmental effects may result.
Reliable and credible scientific and technological institutions could assist
both short- and long-term hazard management efforts by immediate and
high-quality reporting of events involving technological hazards, such as the
Three Mile Island accident and the Bhopal tragedy.
Safer design of potentially hazardous facilities and processes would
reduce risks to health and the environment and may be more cost-effective
and more equitable than other regulatory controls. Such systems have been
proposed for nuclear reactors and for chemical-processing plants. Collective
scrutiny of the role of inherently safer technologies in hazard management
would be useful.
Each session of the symposium raised a number of questions that need to
be explored further. With regard to the adequacy of technical knowledge
upon which decisions about hazard management are made, questions
include the following:
· How can production and dissemination of hazard information within
and between industries be improved?
· What hazards issues might be raised by newly emerging industries?
Questions related to fairness include:
· What issues of equity must be addressed as choices in hazard manage-
ment made by this generation impose burdens on, and restrict choices of,
future generations?
· How should victims of technological hazards be compensated?
· How should.scientific, economic, political, and ethical issues be inte-
grated into a final risk-management decision?
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6
ROBERT M. [WHITE
Finally, questions concerned with practical aspects of managing techno-
logical hazards include:
· What are the actual and potential roles of the insurance industry in
hazard management?
· What are successful approaches to hazard management in various
industries and which approaches might be more broadly applied?
The Symposium on Hazards: Technology and Fairness was effective in
identifying emerging issues in the management of technological hazards,
and in suggesting future activities that will help define and resolve these
issues. The importance of these issues to the management of technological
hazards means that the question of hazards must remain high on the agenda
ofthe government, private sector, and academia for years to come.
REFERENCE
Ruckleshaus, W. D. 1985. Risk, science, and democracy. Issues in Science and Technology
1(3): 19-38.
Representative terms from entire chapter:
hazard management
