Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management: Emerging Findings and Recommendations. Gilbert S. Omenn, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
The Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Management was mandated by section 112(o) of the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 and has been meeting monthly since May 1994. We will report to Congress and the president in March and September 1996. We are considering various issues related to how human health risk assessments are performed and, most importantly, how the results of human health risk assessments are used in regulatory decision-making. Our undertaking is focussed on the five aspects of our mandate: uses and limitations of risk assessment in decision-making; appropriate exposure scenarios; uncertainty and risk communication; risk management policy issues; and, consistency across agencies. The Commission will make recommendations on these five issues in the context of regulatory decision-making as it takes place at the congressional, federal, state, and local agency levels. We will comment on the use of "bright lines" for environmental regulation; sources of inconsistencies between risk-assessment and risk-management practices among agencies; how the uncertainty associated with risk estimates can be communicated in a useful way to regulators and the public; how communities, industries, environmental organizations, and other stakeholders can play an effective role in environmental regulation; how comparative risk assessment can be used to set regulatory priorities; how environmental justice and equity considerations should play a role in decision-making; and, what the appropriate role for cost/benefit analysis in environmental regulation should be. The Commission will also comment on the recommendations made by the 1994 National Research Council report Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment.