An Assessment of the Risk of Chronic Lung Injury Attributable to Long-Term Ozone Exposure

This paper presents an application of a formal process for encoding experts' probabilistic judgments. The objective is to characterize scientific judgment regarding the risk of chronic lung injury to children aged 8 through 16 and to adult outdoor workers due to long-term ozone exposure in areas with patterns of exposure similar to those found in Southern California and the Northeast. Our measure of injury is the incidence of mild or moderate lesions in the centriacinar region of the lung. Probabilities over population response rates were elicited from six health experts actively researching ozone-induced lung injury. We describe our approach, present some judgmental probability distributions over the population response rates for formation of lesions induced by exposure to ozone, summarize some qualitative results, and offer some concluding comments.

[1]  T S Wallsten,et al.  A risk assessment for selected lead-induced health effects: an example of a general methodology. , 1989, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[2]  Ralph L. Keeney,et al.  Elicitation and use of expert judgment in performance assessment for high-level radioactive waste repositories , 1990 .

[3]  Carl-Axel S. Staël von Holstein,et al.  Exceptional Paper---Probability Encoding in Decision Analysis , 1975 .

[4]  D B Menzel,et al.  A model of the regional uptake of gaseous pollutants in the lung. I. The sensitivity of the uptake of ozone in the human lung to lower respiratory tract secretions and exercise. , 1985, Toxicology and applied pharmacology.

[5]  S. R. Hayes,et al.  Estimating the effect of being indoors on total personal exposure to outdoor air pollution. , 1989, JAPCA.

[6]  Rakesh K. Sarin,et al.  Analysis of Alternative National Ambient Carbon Monoxide Standards , 1984 .

[7]  Ralph L. Keeney,et al.  On the uses of expert judgment on complex technical problems , 1989 .

[8]  H Otway,et al.  Expert judgment in risk analysis and management: process, context, and pitfalls. , 1992, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[9]  David V. Budescu,et al.  Encoding subjective probabilities: A psychological and psychometric review , 1983 .

[10]  Stephen C. Hora,et al.  Acquisition of Expert Judgment: Examples from Risk Assessment , 1992 .

[11]  Max Henrion,et al.  Uncertainty: A Guide to Dealing with Uncertainty in Quantitative Risk and Policy Analysis , 1990 .

[12]  Ralph L. Keeney,et al.  Eliciting probabilities from experts in complex technical problems , 1991 .

[13]  Harvey M. Richmond,et al.  Ozone dosimetry predictions for humans and rats , 1990 .

[14]  F. J. Miller,et al.  A model of the regional uptake of gaseous pollutants in the lung. II. The sensitivity of ozone uptake in laboratory animal lungs to anatomical and ventilatory parameters. , 1987, Toxicology and applied pharmacology.