Risk assessment and the environment
Risk assessment in the context of the environment involves estimating the potential harmful consequences of various activities and substances and evaluating the likelihood of those negative impacts occurring. This process aims to identify sources of harm and analyze their probability, contributing to broader management strategies designed to mitigate risks. While quantitative methods are often employed to provide numerical estimates of risk, the complexity of environmental factors—such as human behavior, technological failures, and natural disasters—adds layers of uncertainty to these assessments.
The interplay between objective data and subjective values is a key consideration in risk assessment, as different individuals and groups may perceive and prioritize risks differently based on their backgrounds, experiences, and emotional responses. Factors such as familiarity, control, and societal values can influence public perception of risk, complicating the decision-making process. Moreover, research indicates that demographic factors, including race and gender, play a role in how risks are assessed, suggesting a need for inclusive perspectives in the evaluation. Ultimately, effective risk assessment is essential for understanding and managing the potential impacts of various activities on human health and ecological systems, fostering informed dialogue and accountability within communities.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Risk assessment and the environment
DEFINITION: Estimation of the potential undesirable and harmful consequences of various activities and substances along with likelihood of those negative things happening
Risk assessment is carried out in relation to a growing list of items and activities, including those that may have impacts on the environment. The methods of risk assessment are based on the important goal of reducing unwanted consequences and harmful outcomes. At the same time, the complexity and difficulty of risk assessment is increasingly acknowledged.
Risk assessment is the process of examining potential sources of harm and the likelihood of those harms occurring. Risk assessment is part of a broader management process that also examines the strategies that are, or should be, in place to reduce risks. The degree to which risk assessment and risk management can be separated from one another is the subject of much debate, however. Many issues are involved in this debate, but an important element centers on the degree to which risk assessment relies on objective facts or subjective values. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, the definition of “risk” is the chance an environmental stressor produces harmful effects on human health or to ecological systems.
Quantitative Aspects
Quantitative risk assessment uses a variety of formulas to calculate a numerical value for a risk. The methods of quantitative risk assessment began with gamblers calculating odds and insurance companies estimating their risk of having to make payments on insured items. The practice of risk assessment has since expanded into areas such as environmental protection, public health, and workplace health and safety.
The results of quantitative risk assessment are often expressed in such form as someone’s risk of getting cancer being one in so-many million or someone has a certain percentage risk of losing an investment. This method of risk assessment may be applied to any hazard—that is, an item or situation that could cause harm. Risk assessment can focus on the risks from hazards to employees of a particular company, to various groups, to citizens of a country, or to the whole planet. Assessment can focus on the various risks from one technology, such as all the risks of permitting genetically modified foods into the market.
Quantitative risk assessment involves calculating the magnitude of a potential loss or harm and the probability that the loss or harm will occur. Both of these factors can be very difficult to measure. Part of the challenge is that risk assessment involves predictions about future events that are highly complex and involve much uncertainty. Many different factors contribute to whether or not something will occur. A chemical factory may contain hazardous materials, but the risk that a chemical leak will occur depends on many different elements, including human factors (ranging from errors to terrorism), structural issues with buildings, machinery, geological issues (such as earthquakes), and other factors known and unknown.
For quantitative risk assessment to produce valid results, the calculations must be kept as objective as possible. Some experts maintain that an actual risk number can be calculated with increasing precision for any substance, technology, event, or activity as more data are gathered and more scientific information about the hazard itself becomes available. Risk also involves the probability of a particular harm occurring from a hazard. The assessment of such probability relies on data on the impacts of the hazard on people, living things, and the environment, and also on economic, political, and social systems. Such data allow the analyst to have a better understanding of what the hazard could lead to.
Then the probabilities of various events must be calculated. Risk assessment analysts may use information from toxicology and epidemiology studies to get estimates of the likely incidences of various kinds of health effects. Historical records may be consulted for average failure rates for machinery or the environmental consequences of the of various hazards. Fault tree analysis is widely used in risk assessment to understand past failures. At the top of the fault tree is the event that caused harm, such as the release of a toxin into the atmosphere. Various pathways are traced back to identify the roots of the damaging event and to clarify the contributions of human error, equipment failure, or other causes.
Subjective Aspects
Although scientific data are very important in risk assessment, questions have been raised about the degree of objectivity in the process. A number of studies have found that when different teams conduct risk assessment on the same process, their risk estimates can vary considerably. Social scientists who have examined the process of risk assessment have pointed out the important roles that assumptions and values play in that process. A consensus has emerged that risk assessment involves both technical calculations based on scientific data and subjective value judgments.
The role of values in the risk assessment process is particularly obvious when questions are asked about whether or not certain risks are acceptable or what strategies should be adopted to reduce risks. However, assumptions and values are involved from the beginning. For example, risk assessments were carried out on mining between 1950 and 1970. Calculations based on the number of accidental deaths per ton of coal showed that coal mines were less risky places to work than did calculations based on accidental deaths per employee, which showed the same mines to be slightly more risky. While both assessments were mathematically accurate, the more appropriate one involved value judgments. From the perspective of the miners, the latter assessment would be much more significant.
While risk assessment aims to estimate risk, it also seeks to evaluate the significance of the risk. This is where the human component of risk assessment is most apparent and where subjective elements are important. This can be seen in the informal risk assessments that people carry out personally when they decide whether some action they might take is safe enough or too risky. Some people are willing to accept the risks of activities that others would view as unacceptably risky.
Many factors influence how people perceive risk, and these have been studied extensively for a number of decades. Several factors have been shown to drive perceptions of risk, and these must be taken into account in risk assessment. People’s perceptions of the risk related to new technologies or products are high when they see the new technologies or products as beyond their control, unfamiliar, or invisible, or if they otherwise evoke negative feelings. Whereas earlier work on risk assessment focused on the rational and cognitive dimensions, more recent work has emphasized the role of emotion and affect. Affect is a subtle form of emotion, leading to feelings of like or dislike for an object or action. For example, in assessing the risks or benefits of various activities, people often include affective terms and whether they like or dislike the activities. Factors other than cognitive information enter into risk assessment and related decision making.
When people conduct personal risk assessments, they accept activities or products if they perceive the benefits as outweighing the risks. However, a number of studies have shown that people’s assessments of risks and benefits are linked to their affective reactions to the items being assessed. This is called the affective heuristic of risk assessment. When people like something, they tend to view its benefits as outweighing its risks; when they dislike something, the reverse occurs. The same kinds of responses have been found in studies in which the subjects were scientists and in studies with the general public. Risk assessment in real life is thus not just emotional; rather, it involves a complex interaction between emotional reactions and reason-based analysis.
Social values are also involved in risk assessment. Objects associated with voluntariness, controllability, and equity are generally perceived as lower in risk, while those associated with catastrophic potential, fatality, and threat to future generations are perceived as more risky. Thus flying in an airplane is often viewed as riskier than riding in an automobile, because an airplane crash is catastrophic—in spite of the fact that more people die in road traffic accidents than in airplane crashes. These findings point to the importance of communication about risk. The words and images that become associated with an object or technology can have a major influence in how the risk of the object or technology is perceived and assessed.
Other factors affecting risk assessment are internal to the assessors. One consistent finding in studies is that white males perceive the risks associated with items to be lower than do women and men of other races. Why this is the case is not clear. One of the leading hypotheses is that risk perception is tied to a person’s worldview. Those who accept a hierarchical social order have a lower perception of risk compared to those with a more egalitarian view of social order. Hence those who are more involved in managing and controlling hazardous items may benefit from hierarchical structures and perceive less risk in those items. Those who have less control and power over the items may perceive them as more risky. While much remains unclear in this area, the research that has been conducted has shown the importance of taking people’s different perspectives and backgrounds into consideration in the risk assessment process.
Risk assessment is recognized as an important part of the evaluation of how objects and processes may negatively affect the and many other dimensions of life. While complex mathematical procedures allow the estimation of numerical risk, the role of human values and assumptions is increasingly recognized. As these are made more transparent, their impacts on decisions can be taken into account. This will not remove all the challenges of accurately assessing risk, but it can lead to greater accountability and open dialogue about possible risks.
Bibliography
"About Risk Assessment." Environmental Protection Agency, 24 June 2024, www.epa.gov/risk/about-risk-assessment.pdf. Accessed 22 July 2024.
Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. 1992. Reprint. Translated by Mark Ritter. London: Sage, 2009.
Bostrom, Nick, and Milan M. Ćirković, eds. Global Catastrophic Risks. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Hansson, Sven Ove. “Fallacies of Risk.” Journal of Risk Research 7, no. 3 (2004): 353-360.
Hestor, R. E., and R. M. Harrison, eds. Risk Assessment and Risk Management. Cambridge, England: Royal Society of Chemistry, 1998.
Hurst, Nick W. Risk Assessment: The Human Dimension. Cambridge, England: Royal Society of Chemistry, 1998.
Slovic, Paul. The Perception of Risk. Sterling, Va.: Earthscan, 2000.