Advantages and Disadvantages of a Risk-Related University-Based Approach to Responding to Environmental Management Needs at Department of Energy Sites. Bernard D. Goldstein, Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP*), Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute (EOHSI), UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Rutgers University, 170 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854; Elaine Faustman, University of Washington, School of Public Health, Seattle, WA.; John Moore, Institute for Evaluating Health Risks; and Charles Powers, EOHSI
CRESP is a risk-based approach to environmental management at DOE sites performed primarily at EOHSI and the University of Washington. CRESP has found that the risk assessment paradigm provides an effective platform for multi-disciplinary approaches that tend to be uncommon in academic programs. This multi-disciplinary approach leads to a broad view of risk that includes worker, ecological, cultural, economic and social factors. A key facet of CRESP is its attempt to base its research on understanding the risk perceptions of stakeholders. Central to environmental management based on risk is the recognition that waste volume or hazard alone does not constitute risk. This leads inevitably to a focus on exposure assessment as essential to understanding and communicating risk, a focus that has proven to be helpful in developing effective conceptual approaches to environmental management. We find both a multiplier effect of perhaps 10:1 in economic savings based upon CRESP research as well as examples of more effective response to environmental challenges and to stakeholders concerns. The disadvantages of university-based research, including the inability to fail fast and a tendency to lack of responsiveness to site-based problems, are partially countered by the CRESP approach in which planning and integration of research is performed by the faculty leadership.
Supported by a Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Energy.
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