By Amy Charlene
Reed, RiskWorld staff
E-mail to: reed@tec-com.com.
A group of risk professionals has compiled a list of key risk
resources on the Internet as a project of the Ohio
Chapter of the Society
for Risk Analysis.
"We wanted to help publicize the explosion of information on risk assessment that has become available on the Internet in the past two years," said P.J. "Bert" Hakkinen (e-mail: hakkinen.pj@pg.com), a senior scientist in toxicology and risk assessment with The Procter & Gamble Company in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a member of the SRA Ohio Chapter. "The Internet has opened new opportunities for risk assessors to access data, share ideas, and collaborate on research in ways that we've never had before."
Hakkinen's favorite research tool on the Internet is the RISKANAL mailing list, which has approximately 750 members in 25 countries and is operated by the Columbia-Cascades Chapter of the Society for Risk Analysis and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The list manager is James S. "Jim" Dukelow (e-mail: js_dukelow@pnl.gov), who is a senior research fellow and manager of risk assessment at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
"There has been a terrific exchange of information in this mailing list," stated Hakkinen in an on-line interview. "It is by far the most interesting site on the Internet related to risk."
Hakkinen describes the mailing list and other risk-related Internet sites in a chapter in the upcoming book "Fundamentals of Risk Analysis and Risk Management" edited by Vlasta Molak and scheduled for publication by CRC Press Inc. in November.
An example of how risk professionals use the mailing list occurred when one member solicited recommendations of risk analysis software from fellow subscribers and then compiled a comprehensive listing. In another situation, subscribers used the mailing list to discuss possible topics to be covered in a Monte Carlo analysis exposure assessment workshop, which "led to an often spirited exchange of global communications," Hakkinen reported.
Another of Hakkinen's favorite sites is the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's (ATSDR) homepage on the Internet's World Wide Web. "It provides access to a newsletter, a listing of related Internet resources, toxicological profiles for various chemicals, etc. It even contains a very good and very detailed review (about 30 pages) of risk perception and risk communication information that I feel would be of interest to anyone concerned with these topics," stated Hakkinen, who has used this site in teaching risk assessment to graduate students.
He also recommends the EXtension TOXicology NETwork (EXTOXNET) site. "It is a cooperative effort among various universities to stimulate dialog on toxicology issues and to make toxicology information available. It includes a newsletter, fact sheets, and chemical profiles," he stated.
Another contributor to the SRA chapter's compilation of Internet sites, Michael A. Jayjock of Rohm & Haas in Spring House, Pennsylvania, stated that one of his favorite sites is a "clearinghouse" of information on chemistry and chemical engineering at the homepage of the Council for Chemical Research, which is managed by Professor Manuel Panar (e-mail: panar@udel.edu) of the University of Delaware. The listing is intended to be a source of lecture materials on chemical industry topics, including risk assessments, for teachers but could be useful for others, also.
A second site Jayjock highly recommends is the on-line database called International Toxicity Estimates for Risk (ITER), which is aimed at risk assessors and managers around the world who need human health risk values. The nonprofit Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) organization created and maintains the database. (See stories on ITER and TERA's founder Michael Dourson in RiskWorld.)
"At this point there appears to be less than 30 chemicals in its database, but I have hopes that this approach could pay off in the future with a rich database of high quality information for risk assessors," Jayjock stated.
He noted that while the Internet has tremendous potential as a resource for risk professionals, it still needs to grow. "The Internet is a fantastic library -- the best I have ever seen -- but it has very few books containing risk assessment data. That is the problem for me: huge uncertainty because of a relatively low level of data."
In addition to Hakkinen and Jayjock, other chapter members who helped compile the information include Steven D. Lutkenhoff of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Cincinnati, Ohio; and Ronald J. Marnicio of Foster Wheeler Environmental in Columbus, Ohio.
Following is the project's listing of on-line data, programs, and databases:
Agency
for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA)
EPA's
THERdbASE Modeling and Software Tool
EXtension
TOXicology NETwork (EXTOXNET)
Internet Disaster
Information Network
National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences
Occupational Safety and Health
Administration
Toxicology News Group via the
BIOSCI/bionet Electronic Newsgroup Network for Biology
choose "toxicology" from the newsgroups listed in
"archives")
Canadian Centre for
Occupational Health and Safety
Central European
Environmental Data Request Facility
International Agency for
Research on Cancer
International
Occupational Safety& Health Information Centre
International
Society of Exposure Analysis
Japan's National Institute of
Health Sciences
National University of
Singapore BioMed Server
Netherlands'
National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection
(RIVM)
Sweden's National Institute for
Working Life
United Nations Environmnet
Programme
To join the RISKANAL mailing list, send the following message via the Internet to listserv@listserv.pnl.gov: subscribe riskanal firstname lastname (e.g., subscribe riskanal Mary Smith).
Editor's Note: For a more detailed a
listing of risk-related sites on the World Wide Web, see RiskWorld's
Web Sites department.
Story posted July 22, 1996.
Copyright © 1996 by Tec-Com Inc.