Introduction
People’s lives are always connected with potential risks that can cause serious problems. Thus, decently maintained risk assessment is important because it ensures that those problems that may have a negative impact on the health and environment can be predicted and taken under control. With its help, professionals receive an opportunity to make appropriate decisions for air and water protection. Moreover, it allows ensuring the safety of products people use every day so that no issues will occur because of a chemical substance.
The process of assessment follows a particular plan that is established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and even though some progress in this process was made, the assessment of particular chemicals requires a lot of time, which postpones interventions. The thing is that the process of risk assessment is often criticized and questioned in the framework of its value and credibility. Very often the resources (both monetary and human) available for the assessment are not enough. Due to the rapid development in the scientific spheres, it also turned into a rather complex procedure with an increased number of problems. Still, professionals considered several approached that can be used to improve the process of environmental risk assessment.
Recommendations from the Articles
The article prepared by the Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offers several recommendations that are expected to make risk assessment more credible and helpful (4). First of all, they encourage to pay attention to the plan of assessment so that it aligns with decision-making needs.
It is recommended to create and use guidance to define the required level of detail. The dose-response assessments should be systematic and include background information on a disease, populations, and treatment actions. Defaults should be revised and then be generally used, and cumulative risk assessments implemented. Stakeholder involvement should be increased, and a formal process for it established. Finally, it is important to make sure that the agency will be able to implement the required changes.
While the first work is mainly focused on the recommendations regarding the credibility of assessment procedures, the one prepared by the Science Communication Unit discusses various methods and techniques that can be used (4). Thus, it recommends using interdisciplinary science when dealing with general problems. Still, standardization is still addressed in this framework.
New real-time assessment is needed to avoid the usage of outdated, inappropriate data. This article also emphasized greater stakeholder involvement, as it can help with social and political obstacles. The Science Communication Unit encourages to combine existing assessment models to overcome their drawbacks and use new methodology when analyzing chemicals (5). They recommend using geodiversity information to consider how to adapt the ecosystem to changes.
Recommendations and Conclusions
Thus, it can be concluded that the environmental risk assessment is important for the human beings process that is aimed at ensuring safety from chemical substances. Unfortunately, it is often questioned today and fails to meet professionals’ expectations. To improve the situation, they offer various interventions. On their basis, I recommend to pay more attention to the assessment procedure and resources needed for it.
All stakeholders should participate in the search of funding and efficient human resources. The commonly used plan of actions and defaults should be revised. The data used for assessments should always be current and authoritative. Finally, the readiness of the agency to implement these changes should be ensured. The attention should be paid to the leadership, training, and interactions between the teams.
Works Cited
Committee on Improving Risk Analysis Approaches Used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Advancing Risk Assessment. 2008. PDF file.
Science Communication Unit. Integrating Environmental Risk Assesssment. 2015. PDF file.