Risk Management Guidelines for Regulatory Decisions About Protecting Environmental Health

Regulatory decisions about environmental health hazards in the United States are typically made within the context of the conventional risk assessment–risk management paradigm established by the National Research Council. In this framework, risk assessment refers to the use of available scientific knowledge and understanding to estimate the magnitude, probability, and uncertainty of harm to humans from activities, substances, and technologies, while risk management involves consideration of both facts and values to decide which risks are unacceptable and what, if anything, to do about them. Both the paradigm and the interface between risk assessment and management have evolved over time as it has become obvious that environmental health problems are more complex and expensive to solve than originally thought. While the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed extensive guidelines for important aspects of risk assessment, there is no comparable guidance for risk management. This article reviews the evolution of the risk assessment–risk management paradigm, provides a brief overview of relevant public policy literature, surveys the potential value of risk management guidance, and discusses possible starting points for development of formal risk management guidelines. It is argued that promulgation of explicit guidelines for risk management is desirable because it would make the guiding principles, core values, primary goals, and organizational policies behind risk‐based decisions explicit and unambiguous, thereby fostering improved public understanding and wider acceptance of risk‐based decisions .