International Toxicity Estimates for Risk Database Now Includes CIIT Formaldehyde Cancer Risk Data. Toxicology Excellence for Risk Assessment (TERA) recently added formaldehyde cancer risk data from the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology to TERA's International Toxicity Estimates for Risk (ITER) database. Read the news brief in RiskWorld and, in addition, an announcement about TERA's visiting scientists. (Posted 11/15/01)

Do Old Smallpox Vaccinations Adequately Protect Us Now? The USA Today newspaper reported today that smallpox vaccinations given more than 50 years ago still offer some protection and that smallpox, which is not as contagious as the more common measles or flu, might not require mass immunization in the event of a bioterrorist attack. Writer Rita Rubin talks with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention smallpox expert James LeDuc. The article is located at http://www.usatoday.com/news/attack/2001/11/08/smallpox-usat.htm. (Posted 11/8/01)

AMA Offers Free Access to Bioterrorism Articles. The American Medical Association website is making available free of charge a collection of articles on bioterrorism that have been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and the Archives Journals. The list of titles and authors, with links to the articles' abstracts and full text (both HTML and PDF versions), is located at http://pubs.ama-assn.org/bioterr.html. (Posted 10/23/01)

In addition, see the European Union's response to the September 11 attacks at http://europa.eu.int/geninfo/keyissues/110901/.

(Posted September 2001; latest update, 16 November 2001.)

Researchers Rank Construction Risks: "Same Things Killing Workers Over and Over." Researchers from the University of Tennessee hope their ranking of job-site risks in the U.S. construction industry comparing 1999 data to averages for 1991-98 can aid in prevention. "The ranking of the causes of fatalities in the construction industry have been as stable as can be over the past 10 years," said Director William Schriver of the university's Construction Industry Research and Policy Center. We are asking, 'What can be done to intervene? The same things are killing people over and over.'" See full text. (Posted August 2001.)

Register Now for Webcast on Human Cloning. Space is limited but still available to participate in the Tuesday, August 7, webcast of an information-gathering workshop on the scientific and medical aspects of human cloning. The meeting will support a National Academies’ study that will result in a published report, recommendations for evaluating future research, and a review of the possibility of a moratorium on human cloning. See full text. (Posted August 2001.)

Project Seeks Input on Identifying Transportation Data Gaps. Planners, policy makers, managers, researchers, and others who have found gaps in the transportation data they need to make informed decisions or who have transportation questions for which data is not available may submit their findings to the Data Gaps Project, a collaborative effort to fill transportation data gaps. See full text. (Posted August 2001.)

U.S. Senate Confirms John Graham Nomination. On July 19, 2001, the U.S. Senate confirmed President George Bush's nomination of John D. Graham as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. The Congressional Record documents the debate preceding the confirmation on July 19 and one senator's objection to the confirmation on July 20. In addition, Senators Fred Thompson (R-Tennessee) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan), members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, issued a statement on July 19 in support of Graham. (For an overview, see Harvard Center for Risk Analysis' web page on the John Graham nomination.) (Posted July 2001.)

Washington Post Published Articles on Graham Nomination Prior to Senate Confirmation Vote. The Washington Post published an article on July 16, 2001, "Graham Flunks the Cost-Benefit Test," by U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), who opposed the confirmation of John D. Graham as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget. On July 19, the newspaper's editorial page included "The Other Budget." Its on-line edition links to reader responses to the editorial. (Posted July 2001.)

Presidential Nominee John Graham Receives Governmental Affairs Committee Approval. The U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs approved President George Bush's nomination of Harvard Center for Risk Analysis Director John D. Graham as administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs by a vote of 9 to 3 on May 23, 2001 (see action taken at business meeting). Committee Chairman Fred Thompson reported the approved nomination to the Senate with the recommendation that Graham "be confirmed subject to the nominee's commitment to respond to requests to appear and testify before any duly constituted committee of the Senate" (Congressional Record, May 23, 2001, page S5542). Thompson's comments at the committee's meeting on May 23 supported Graham's nomination. The committee's ranking senator, Joseph Lieberman, voted against the nomination (read his comments in press statement). (Posted May 2001.)

Presidential Nominee John Graham Testifies Before Senate Committee. John D. Graham, nominated by President George Bush to become administrator of the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), testified May 17, 2001, at his nomination hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. Graham is founder and director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and the 1995-96 president of the Society for Risk Analysis. The opening comments of Joseph Lieberman, the committee's ranking senator, and Susan Collins, committee member and senator from Maine, and Graham's opening statement are available on line, as well as articles on Graham's nomination by Staff Writer Cindy Skrzycki that were published May 15 and May 18 in the Washington Post. (Posted May 2001.)

RiskWorld Publishes Readers' Questions in Help Online. RiskWorld now publishes questions from readers to readers in Help Online, a new department of this on-line publication. Readers may send their questions, requests for information, and other inquiries relevant to risk analysis to bryant@tec-com.com. Readers with information or suggestions in response to those questions may reply to bryant@tec-com.com. RiskWorld will forward the responses to the inquirer and will publish them in a Help Online archives. All inquirers and respondents will remain anonymous. Help Online is located at http://www.riskworld.com/helponline/question.htm. (Posted May 2001.)

Round-up of World Resources Covering Mad Cow Disease.  A comprehensive listing of recent news articles on mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and its leap to humans as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease covers the latest developments in the United States, England, France, The Netherlands, and Germany.  See  http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/Health/Mad_Cow_Disease.  Another archive organized by the Sperling Biomedical Foundation offers more than 7,000 news articles and a list of researchers studying the disease. See http://www.mad-cow.org/. (Posted April 2001.)

Other resources include the World Health Organization http://www.who.int/emc/diseases/bse/; the European Union http://europa.eu.int/; the British Ministry of Agriculture http://www.maff.gov.uk/animalh/bse/; the University of Illinois http://w3.aces.uiuc.edu/AnSci/BSE/; the Public Broadcasting Service http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madcow/; and Cable News Network  http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/madcow/. 

New Version of Benchmark Dose Software Available for Downloading. This month the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released the latest version of its Benchmark Dose Software, which was developed as a tool to facilitate the application of benchmark dose methods to the hazardous pollutant risk assessments.  The just-released software (version 1.3) contains new models that are more compact and stable, including continuous Polynomial (v2.1), Power (v2.1), and Hill (v2.1) models and new dichotomous Multistage (v2.1), Weibull (v2.1), and Gamma (v2.2) models. Version 1.3 also includes improved user interface upgrades, which are described in the new help manual. Web site access to the software is located at http://www.epa.gov/ncea/bmds.htm. (Posted April 2001.)

Other EPA Software and Databases for Tackling Environmental and Health Issues.  Access to other free software and databases for both risk professionals and families is available on a wide range of risk-related topics at the web site of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Examples of software topics available for home owners include assessing lead in drinking water and reducing exposure, making homes more energy efficient, and using alternatives to septic tanks, and accessing a nationwide listing of local guidelines on the risks of fish consumption.  (Posted April 2001.)

For risk professionals, a wide range of media-specific tools on topics such as air quality, pollution prevention, pesticides, toxic substances, solid waste, and water quality are online at http://www.epa.gov/epahome/dmedia.htm. Integrated media databases, software, and other tools are available at http://www.epa.gov/epahome/datamulti.htm.

EPA Releases Draft Paper on How Food Processing Affects Levels of StarLink Protein in Finished Food. On March 7, 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a draft document for public and scientific peer review that explains how the 80 percent of food products manufactured from corn, including corn oil, corn syrup, alcohol, and corn starch, which undergo a wet-milling process, would contain essentially no residues of StarLink, or Cry9C, protein when StarLink corn is used. Food products from dry-milled StarLink corn do contain the protein. After the 30-day comment period for the review closes, EPA will evaluate the impact of this information on assessing potential exposure to wet-milled StarLink corn products. The document (PDF, 56 KB) is available at http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/biopesticides/. (Posted March 2001.)

Whipple Elected to National Academy of Engineering. Among 74 engineers and eight foreign associates recently elected to membership in the National Academy of Engineering is Chris G. Whipple of ENVIRON International Corporation's office in Emeryville, California. The academy membership honors Whipple "for developing innovative risk assessment methodologies and for their application to issues of national importance." See the full news release for more information. (Posted February 2001.)

Environmental Defense Interviews Op-Ed Coauthor Regarding the Need to Identify Possible Contaminants in Mothers' Milk. In November 2000, the San Francisco Chronicle published an op-ed in which the coauthors -- Environmental Defense Attorney Karen Florini and Environmental Defense Trustee Dr. Lynn R. Goldman, professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency assistant administrator -- asked the U.S. Congress to "direct the Department of Health and Human Services to launch a pilot program to identify the full range of contaminants in human breast milk." The Environmental Defense web site provides both audio and print versions of an interview with Florini, who describes why starting such a program is "not as easy as it sounds." (Posted January 2001.)

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