What Should Be the Implications of Uncertainty, Variability, and Inherent “Biases”/“Conservatism” for Risk Management Decision-Making?

This paper is a challenge from a pair of lifelong technical specialists in risk assessment for the risk-management community to better define social decision criteria for risk acceptance vs. risk control in relation to the issues of variability and uncertainty. To stimulate discussion, we offer a variety of “straw man” proposals about where we think variability and uncertainty are likely to matter for different types of social policy considerations in the context of a few different kinds of decisions. In particular, we draw on recent presentations of uncertainty and variability data that have been offered by EPA in the context of the consideration of revised ambient air quality standards under the Clean Air Act.

[1]  K. Arrow,et al.  Uncertainty and the Evaluation of Public Investment Decisions , 2014 .

[2]  Albert R. Jonsen,et al.  Do No Harm: Axiom of Medical Ethics , 1977 .

[3]  John A. Smith,et al.  What's Wrong with Quantitative Risk Assessment? , 1986 .

[4]  L. Robin Keller,et al.  Equity in Social Risk: Some Empirical Observations , 1988 .

[5]  D Hattis,et al.  Expected values for projected cancer risks from putative genetically acting agents. , 1991, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[6]  R. Bullard,et al.  Environmental Justice for all: Community Perspectives on Health and Research , 1993, Toxicology and industrial health.

[7]  Suresh H. Moolgavkar,et al.  Particulate Air Pollution, Sulfur Dioxide, and Daily Mortality: A Reanalysis of the Steubenville Data , 1995 .

[8]  A. Finkel,et al.  Toward less misleading comparisons of uncertain risks: the example of aflatoxin and alar. , 1995, Environmental health perspectives.

[9]  Suresh H. Moolgavkar,et al.  Air Pollution and Daily Mortality in Philadelphia , 1995, Epidemiology.

[10]  D Hattis,et al.  Risk evaluation: criteria arising from legal traditions and experience with quantitative risk assessment in the United States. , 1996, Environmental toxicology and pharmacology.

[11]  Dale Hattis,et al.  Human Interindividual Variability in Cancer Risks—Technical and Management Challenges , 1996 .

[12]  Dale Hattis,et al.  Drawing the Line: Quantitative Criteria for Risk Management , 1996 .

[13]  R. Whitfield,et al.  A probabilistic assessment of health risks associated with short-term exposure to tropospheric ozone , 1996 .

[14]  D. Hattis.  Variability in susceptibility - how big, how often, for what responses to what agents? , 1996, Environmental toxicology and pharmacology.

[15]  E G Luebeck,et al.  Air Pollution and Hospital Admissions for Respiratory Causes in Minneapolis‐St. Paul and Birmingham , 1997, Epidemiology.