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THREE MILE ISLAND AND BHOPAL: LESSONS LEARNED AND NOT LEARNED 203 original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. around TMI. This case is still in the courts. If we lose, the effects may be paralyzing. The EPA administrator may have had this case pointed out to him as he considered whether to allow the release of bioengineered products for agricultural use. The approval for bioengineered products is a responsibility shared among the National Institutes of Health (NIH), EPA, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) (Sun, 1985a, 1985b, 1985c), and the D.C. Court has recently ruled that NIH must conduct environmental assessments before giving approval for biotechnology experiments (Sun, 1985b). The court suit against the NRC commissioners may become a major factor in any administrator's decision. 4. Educate the public about risk. This is a shared responsibility of regulators, industry, and the Congress. Unless risk, and comparative risk in particular, can be explained and accepted by the public, hazardous technology will continue to be under attack, as will be the regulators and other public officials. The Ruckelshaus example cited above illustrates a positive approach for meeting this responsibility. The Three Mile Island accident acquainted many people with the concept that the risk of an event is the probability of the event times the consequences. Nevertheless, this concept remains foreign to most of the public even though life is a continuous series of risk judgments. Sometimes we take steps to reduce the probability; sometimes, the consequences. For example, getting faulty brakes fixed before driving your car in rush hour traffic reduces the probability of an undesirable event; wearing a seat belt reduces some consequences. Some people argue that for high-consequence events, the risk should be the probability times a weighted consequence, where the weighting factor increases in relation to the seriousness of the consequence. Apparently this is the way the public comprehends risk. It would appear that much of the press and many of the more vocal members of Congress do also. THE PUBLIC The U.S. public is more willing than that of other countries to actively oppose locating or operating nuclear power plants, although this phenomenon may be spreading. Such opposition is one area of public participation in government where apathy does not prevail. The chemical industry and other industries that can be described as hazardous should be concerned. They might try to learn from hearings on nuclear power plants what causes public fear and opposition. The chemical industry should recognize that the growing concern about waste disposal is leading the public to become concerned about the generators of that waste. Disposal is greatly simplified if the waste
