Science and Decisions
Science and Decisions

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2009-03-24

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 0309120462

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Risk assessment has become a dominant public policy tool for making choices, based on limited resources, to protect public health and the environment. It has been instrumental to the mission of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as well as other federal agencies in evaluating public health concerns, informing regulatory and technological decisions, prioritizing research needs and funding, and in developing approaches for cost-benefit analysis. However, risk assessment is at a crossroads. Despite advances in the field, risk assessment faces a number of significant challenges including lengthy delays in making complex decisions; lack of data leading to significant uncertainty in risk assessments; and many chemicals in the marketplace that have not been evaluated and emerging agents requiring assessment. Science and Decisions makes practical scientific and technical recommendations to address these challenges. This book is a complement to the widely used 1983 National Academies book, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government (also known as the Red Book). The earlier book established a framework for the concepts and conduct of risk assessment that has been adopted by numerous expert committees, regulatory agencies, and public health institutions. The new book embeds these concepts within a broader framework for risk-based decision-making. Together, these are essential references for those working in the regulatory and public health fields.

Silent Spring
Silent Spring

Author: Rachel Carson

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780618249060

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The essential, cornerstone book of modern environmentalism is now offered in a handsome 40th anniversary edition which features a new Introduction by activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new Afterword by Carson biographer Linda Lear.

Fifty Years at the US Environmental Protection Agency
Fifty Years at the US Environmental Protection Agency

Author: A. James Barnes

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-02-15

Total Pages: 671

ISBN-13: 1538147130

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In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, this book brings together leading scholars and EPA veterans to provide a comprehensive assessment of the agency’s key decisions and actions in the various areas of its responsibility. Themes across all chapters include the role of rulemaking, negotiation/compromise, partisan polarization, judicial impacts, relations with the White House and Congress, public opinion, interest group pressures, environmental enforcement, environmental justice, risk assessment, and interagency conflict. As no other book on the market currently discusses EPA with this focus or scope, the authors have set out to provide a comprehensive analysis of the agency’s rich 50-year history for academics, students, professional, and the environmental community.

Science for Environmental Protection
Science for Environmental Protection

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2012-12-21

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 0309264898

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In anticipation of future environmental science and engineering challenges and technologic advances, EPA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to assess the overall capabilities of the agency to develop, obtain, and use the best available scientific and technologic information and tools to meet persistent, emerging, and future mission challenges and opportunities. Although the committee cannot predict with certainty what new environmental problems EPA will face in the next 10 years or more, it worked to identify some of the common drivers and common characteristics of problems that are likely to occur. Tensions inherent to the structure of EPA's work contribute to the current and persistent challenges faced by the agency, and meeting those challenges will require development of leading-edge scientific methods, tools, and technologies, and a more deliberate approach to systems thinking and interdisciplinary science. Science for Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead outlines a framework for building science for environmental protection in the 21st century and identified key areas where enhanced leadership and capacity can strengthen the agency's abilities to address current and emerging environmental challenges as well as take advantage of new tools and technologies to address them. The foundation of EPA science is strong, but the agency needs to continue to address numerous present and future challenges if it is to maintain its science leadership and meet its expanding mandates.

Sustainability and the U.S. EPA
Sustainability and the U.S. EPA

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2011-09-08

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0309212553

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Sustainability is based on a simple and long-recognized factual premise: Everything that humans require for their survival and well-being depends, directly or indirectly, on the natural environment. The environment provides the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Recognizing the importance of sustainability to its work, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been working to create programs and applications in a variety of areas to better incorporate sustainability into decision-making at the agency. To further strengthen the scientific basis for sustainability as it applies to human health and environmental protection, the EPA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to provide a framework for incorporating sustainability into the EPA's principles and decision-making. This framework, Sustainability and the U.S. EPA, provides recommendations for a sustainability approach that both incorporates and goes beyond an approach based on assessing and managing the risks posed by pollutants that has largely shaped environmental policy since the 1980s. Although risk-based methods have led to many successes and remain important tools, the report concludes that they are not adequate to address many of the complex problems that put current and future generations at risk, such as depletion of natural resources, climate change, and loss of biodiversity. Moreover, sophisticated tools are increasingly available to address cross-cutting, complex, and challenging issues that go beyond risk management. The report recommends that EPA formally adopt as its sustainability paradigm the widely used "three pillars" approach, which means considering the environmental, social, and economic impacts of an action or decision. Health should be expressly included in the "social" pillar. EPA should also articulate its vision for sustainability and develop a set of sustainability principles that would underlie all agency policies and programs.

The Science of Bureaucracy
The Science of Bureaucracy

Author: David Demortain

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-01-21

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 026253794X

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How the US Environmental Protection Agency designed the governance of risk and forged its legitimacy over the course of four decades. The US Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970 to protect the public health and environment, administering and enforcing a range of statutes and programs. Over four decades, the EPA has been a risk bureaucracy, formalizing many of the methods of the scientific governance of risk, from quantitative risk assessment to risk ranking. Demortain traces the creation of these methods for the governance of risk, the controversies to which they responded, and the controversies that they aroused in turn. He discusses the professional networks in which they were conceived; how they were used; and how they served to legitimize the EPA. Demortain argues that the EPA is structurally embedded in controversy, resulting in constant reevaluation of its credibility and fueling the evolution of the knowledge and technologies it uses to produce decisions and to create a legitimate image of how and why it acts on the environment. He describes the emergence and institutionalization of the risk assessment–risk management framework codified in the National Research Council's Red Book, and its subsequent unraveling as the agency's mission evolved toward environmental justice, ecological restoration, and sustainability, and as controversies over determining risk gained vigor in the 1990s. Through its rise and fall at the EPA, risk decision-making enshrines the science of a bureaucracy that learns how to make credible decisions and to reform itself, amid constant conflicts about the environment, risk, and its own legitimacy.

Controlled Human Inhalation-Exposure Studies at EPA
Controlled Human Inhalation-Exposure Studies at EPA

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-04-10

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 030945252X

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a mission and regulatory responsibility to protect human health and the environment. EPA's pursuit of that goal includes a variety of research activities involving human subjects, such as epidemiologic studies and surveys. Those research activities also involve studies of individuals who volunteer to be exposed to air pollutants intentionally in controlled laboratory settings so that measurements can be made of transient and reversible biomarker or physiologic responses to those exposures that can indicate pathways of toxicity and mechanisms of air-pollution responses. The results of those controlled human inhalation exposure (CHIE) studies, also referred to as human clinical studies or human challenge studies, are used to inform policy decisions and help establish or revise standards to protect public health and improve air quality. Controlled Human Inhalation-Exposure Studies at EPA addresses scientific issues and provides guidance on the conduct of CHIE studies. This report assesses the utility of CHIE studies to inform and reduce uncertainties in setting air-pollution standards to protect public health and assess whether continuation of such studies is warranted. It also evaluates the potential health risks to test subjects who participated in recent studies of air pollutants at EPA's clinical research facility.

Arsenic in Drinking Water
Arsenic in Drinking Water

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2001-12-26

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0309076293

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Having safe drinking water is important to all Americans. The Environmental Protection Agency's decision in the summer of 2001 to delay implementing a new, more stringent standard for the maximum allowable level for arsenic in drinking water generated a great deal of criticism and controversy. Ultimately at issue were newer data on arsenic beyond those that had been examined in a 1999 National Research Council report. EPA asked the National Research Council for an evaluation of the new data available. The committee's analyses and conclusions are presented in Arsenic in Drinking Water: 2001 Update. New epidemiological studies are critically evaluated, as are new experimental data that provide information on how and at what level arsenic in drinking water can lead to cancer. The report's findings are consistent with those of the 1999 report that found high risks of cancer at the previous federal standard of 50 parts per billion. In fact, the new report concludes that men and women who consume water containing 3 parts per billion of arsenic daily have about a 1 in 1,000 increased risk of developing bladder or lung cancer during their lifetime.

Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment
Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1994-01-01

Total Pages: 668

ISBN-13: 030904894X

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The public depends on competent risk assessment from the federal government and the scientific community to grapple with the threat of pollution. When risk reports turn out to be overblownâ€"or when risks are overlookedâ€"public skepticism abounds. This comprehensive and readable book explores how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can improve its risk assessment practices, with a focus on implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. With a wealth of detailed information, pertinent examples, and revealing analysis, the volume explores the "default option" and other basic concepts. It offers two views of EPA operations: The first examines how EPA currently assesses exposure to hazardous air pollutants, evaluates the toxicity of a substance, and characterizes the risk to the public. The second, more holistic, view explores how EPA can improve in several critical areas of risk assessment by focusing on cross-cutting themes and incorporating more scientific judgment. This comprehensive volume will be important to the EPA and other agencies, risk managers, environmental advocates, scientists, faculty, students, and concerned individuals.