Making the Relationship between Risk Assessment and Risk Management More Intimate

Abstract

K eeping a separation between risk assessment and risk management is a common theme in environmental regulatory affairs. Values should play no part in the science of assessment, and management decisions often have to be based on more than the science and the values of scientists. Yet a couple of recent reports, from both the US ("Silver Book" 1 ) and EU (Opinion of the Scientific Committees of the European Commission 2 ) arenas, have drawn attention to shortcomings in the risk assessment process that derive, in part at least, from maintaining a too sharp separation between the assessors and the managers. Here we revisit the relationship between risk assessment and risk management with these developments as background and argue for a closer relationship. Our focus will be on the risks from chemicals in the environment but the principles will be more broadly applicable.

Cumulative health risk assessment of co-occurring mycotoxins of deoxynivalenol and its acetyl derivatives in wheat and maize: Case study, Shanghai, China

“…In 2010, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) reconsidered the toxicity of the acetylated derivatives (3-ADON and 15-ADON) to be similar to that of DON and extended the previous Provisional Maximum Tolerable Daily Intake (PMTDI) of 1 μg/kg body weight/day (JECFA, 2001) to a group PTMDI for the three compounds (JECFA, 2010). Due to the high toxicity and co-occurrence of the targeted mycotoxins, assessments of cumulative health risks associated with dietary intake (DI) of multiple mycotoxins are required (Calow and Forbes, 2013;Sexton and Linder, 2014).…”

Environmental Risk Assessors as Honest Brokers or Stealth Advocates

“…There has been a concern that the outputs from risk assessments associated with the impacts of chemicals on human health and the environment have not been used as much to make management decisions as the amount of effort put into them should warrant . There has therefore been a general call to make the assessments more relevant to the management process . Yet, there is also an understandable concern that making risk assessments more in‐tune with the needs of risk managers through a closer relationship between the risk assessors and other stakeholders might undermine the objective basis of the scientific analyses.…”

“…In principle, then, this gives risk assessment scientists the best chance of acting as Honest Brokers. In practice, though, endpoints are often expressed in terms of surrogates such as molecular and cellular responses to chemical exposures and judgments have to be made about their importance relative to the valued endpoints …”

“…For these and other reasons, there can be disconnects between risk assessment and risk management that are well rehearsed …”

Risk assessment considerations with regard to the potential impacts of pesticides on endangered species

“…If 1 or more populations may be impacted, ecosystem models can be used to assess the potential for indirect effects to listed species via reduction in availability of prey or habitat. Finally, ecological economic models can be used to assess the costs and benefits of different risk management options, which can inform risk management decisions (Thorbek et al ; Calow and Forbes ; Forbes and Calow ). Ecological models come with different levels of complexity and the degree of testing vary widely so it is critical to choose the best model for answering the specific risk assessment questions (Schmolke et al ; Augusiak et al ).…”