Abstract of Meeting Paper

The 1996 Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis-Europe

Perception of Risk Assessment and Risk Management Applications in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS): Recent Training Sessions in Risk Assessment. Robin D. Smith, Geraghty & Miller, Inc., Denver, Colorado USA; and Lawrence Houlden, Geraghty & Miller International, Cambridge, England UK

A recent training conference held in Moscow, Russia for environmental specialists and managers from the Russian Federation and other CIS locations provided a unique first-hand opportunity to explore the perception of risk assessment in the FSU.

The conference, sponsored by USAID and the Russian International Institute for Health Risk Assessment, was conducted to provide follow-on training for approximately 50 environmental specialists and managers in the areas of risk assessment and risk management. A second priority of the conference was the development of an initial strategy for incorporating the best of risk assessment and management techniques from the US and Europe into an approach which was compatible with existing CIS process. Lecturers from the US and CIS presented on a wide variety of topics ranging from highly technical areas of human health and ecological risk assessment, to those concerned more with the implementation of an approach compatible with the current situation in the FSU. Interest in the detailed technical approaches to specific problems in environmental health (e.g. the EPA IEUBK model for lead and the framework for ecological risk assessment) was, to an extent, overshadowed by other concerns.

The attendees were concerned with

1. Best methods for prioritizing environmental problems in the FSU,

2. Developing a regulatory framework to deal with problems in a cost-effective fashion while protecting human health and the environment,

3. Incorporating all of the best risk assessment approaches and techniques from Europe and the US into a framework suited for the CIS, and

4. Creating an effective format for communicating risk assessment strategy with risk communication for politicians and the public.

The content of the training seminar is presented along with a hierarchy of concerns expressed by the conference attendees and some of the initial thoughts on how the development of a comprehensive strategy might be developed.