Risk Policy Report, June 26, 2007

ACTIVISTS WANT MORE PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN RISK ASSESSMENTS

[Rachel's introduction: Activists and environmental health experts are stepping up their long-standing demand for more public participation in EPA risk assessment decisions.]

Activists and environmental health experts are stepping up their long- standing demand for more public participation in EPA risk assessment decisions, urging a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel that is developing a report on improving risk assessment practices to include a strong recommendation for enhancing the affected public's role in agency risk assessment and mitigation decisions.

Among other changes activists seek is EPA involving the public early in the processes of deciding what issues should be addressed in agency site-specific risk assessments.

The latest call for more public participation in risk decisions echoes recommendations made in a 1996 NAS report, Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society, which found that implementing risk decisions can be difficult if federal agencies do not involve stakeholders in the process. For instance, the report noted that chemical producers can be relied on to participate in risk assessment processes and debates, but "representatives of the more general public or [activist] groups cannot, perhaps because of lack of resources or limited expertise." The report concluded, "Ways to broaden participation in these exercises should be explored."

That suggestion is being aggressively touted by environmentalists and academic experts as the current NAS panel continues its work. For instance, at a June 11 meeting of the panel in Washington, DC, Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources Defense Council said following the 1996 recommendation "would go a long way" toward restoring public confidence in EPA risk assessment and regulatory decisions, which she argued has eroded over the years.

"Communities hate risk assessment" as it is currently practiced at EPA, she told the panel, citing as an example a New York City group called West Harlem Action whose representatives argued at a public forum earlier this year that "communities feel there are really smart technical people out there who don't come and breathe the air in Harlem or drink the water.... They look at mice instead of people." Communities resist "having to live with regulatory decisions" without ever meeting or consulting with risk assessors or regulators, she said.

A West Harlem Action source did not respond to requests for comment.

At the meeting, panel chair Thomas Burke of Johns Hopkins University asked Sass whether risk assessment "is running the risk of being irrelevant" to real-world environmental health issues and how it could respond to that potential problem. Sass said her concern is that "this panel gets it" on the need for public participation, just as the 1996 panel ultimately promoted the idea in its report, "but how will EPA implement it?" She argued the agency "has failed almost willfully to engage public participation," for instance on assessing the risks of organophosphate pesticides.

Sass' comments closely track with presentations to the panel earlier this year by Amy Kyle of the University of California (UC) at Berkeley and Nicholas Ashford of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Risk Policy Report, April 24, p1). For instance, Kyle said EPA's definition of risk assessment should encompass potential risks to whole communities.

"Risk assessment needs to be informed by a public problem paradigm, not just using the same [study] model every time," Kyle said at the April 17 meeting. "The audience isn't just agencies" but includes the public being protected by regulations, she said, adding that such work could, for instance, support decisions by communities as well as individuals "on safer, less toxic products."

She argued that "at the heart of this is the 'My way or the highway' attitude from the risk assessment community, the idea that if you don't do it my way nothing else you do is scientific."

NAS panel member Thomas McKone, also of UC Berkeley, asked Kyle at that meeting whether EPA would be the right agency to do the kind of work she proposed. "I'm not saying EPA can do all of this," she responded, "but thinking about how to do it could be beneficial." Ashford agreed with Kyle's assessment, saying, "When you talk to a community you tell them about risk assessment and uncertainty and so on and then someone [from the community] says, 'Does that plant need to be there? Does it need to do what it's doing the way it's doing it?' Well, that's an embarrassing question." It is also a question toxicologists aren't equipped to answer, Ashford said.

Sass said at the June 11 meeting that more complete public participation in risk decisions is desirable for the scientific community and would not result in anti-industry bias. "People in fenceline communities [near industrial sites] don't want those businesses shut down. They work at the sites they live near," she said. She pointed out, however, that occupational exposures "are some of the highest" of any scenario and urged the panel to consider that factor in making its recommendations.

Panel member Adam Finkel of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey concurred, saying, "One place where not a lot of data is gathered is the workplace, and it's not going to happen if you rely on" the Occupational Safety & Health Administration or the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health. "EPA could lend a helping hand," he said.