Glossary

affected parties Individuals and organizations acted upon by chemicals, radiation, or microbes in the environment or influenced favorably or adversely by proposed risk management actions and decisions.
alternative compliance A policy which allows facilities to choose among methods for achieving emission-reduction or risk-reduction specifications instead of command-and-control regulations that specify standards and how to meet them. An example of alternative compliance is the use of a theoretical bubble over a facility to cap the amount of pollution emitted while allowing the company to choose where and how within the facility it gets to or stays below the cap.
attainment area A geographical area, such as a city, state, or regional airshed, that is meeting EPA clean air standards.
benefit-cost analysis (BCA) An economic method for assessing the benefits and costs of achieving alternative health-based standards with different levels of health protection.
collaborative stakeholder involvement Engaging interested and affected parties in the substantive work of risk management, through all 6 stages of the Commission’s Framework.
command-and-control regulations Specific requirements prescribing how to comply with specific standards defining acceptable levels of pollution.
Common Sense Initiative A current EPA initiative that convenes teams of stakeholders in six major industrial sectors— automobile manufacturing, computers and electronics, iron and steel, metal finishing, petroleum refining, and printing—to find comprehensive and feasible strategies to reduce pollution.
contaminants Chemicals, microorganisms, or radiation found in air, soil, water, or food that are not normally constituents of these environmental media.
context Here refers to public health and ecological assessment of the contribution of any particular environmental hazard to health, safety, or the environment.
cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) An economic method to identify the least costly way to achieve a particular health protection goal.
cumulative Enlarging or increasing by successive addition.
disease incidence The rate of new occurrences of a disease.
exposure-response relationship The relationship between exposure level and the incidence of adverse effects.
ecological risk assessment A process used to estimate the likelihood of adverse effects on plants or animals from exposure to stressors, such as chemicals or the draining of wetlands. The process includes problem formulation, characterization of exposure, characterization of ecological effects, and risk characterization.
economic analysis An analysis in monetary values of the costs and benefits of various actions to protect health or the environment.
end of the pipe Relying on technologies, such as scrubbers on smokestacks and catalytic converters on vehicle tailpipes, to reduce emissions of pollutants after they have formed.
environmental justice Concern about the disproportionate occurrence of pollution and potential pollution-related health effects affecting low-income, cultural, and ethnic populations and lesser cleanup efforts in their communities.
epidemiology The core public health science, investigating the causes and risk factors of disease and injury in populations and the potential to reduce such disease burdens.
equity Just, fair, and impartial treatment of all people and population groups, including low-income, cultural, and ethnic populations potentially more affected by pollution.
exposure assessment Determination of the sources, environmental transport and modification, and fate of pollutants and contaminants, including the conditions under which people or other target species, could be exposed and the doses that could result in adverse effects.
exposure pathway The path from sources of pollutants via air, soil, water, or food to reach people and other potentially affected species or settings.
hazard A source of possible damage or injury.
interdependence Mutual dependence.
iterative process Replication of a series of actions to produce successively better results, or to accommodate new and different critical information or scientific inferences.
life cycle Tracking a product through all stages of its development, from extraction of fuel for power to production, use, and disposal.
maximum available control technology (MACT) The emission standard for sources of air pollution requiring the maximum reduction of hazardous air pollutant emisssions, taking cost and feasibility into account. Under section 112 of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, the MACT must not be less than the average emission level achieved by controls on the best performing 12% of existing sources, by category of industrial and utility sources.
multimedia approach A process for considering several environmental media, such as air, water, and land, together, rather than in isolation.
multiple risks Risks from several sources or many agents.
options Choices of actions.
peer review Evaluation of the accuracy or validity of technical data, observations, and interpretation by qualified experts in an organized group process.
precautionary principle Decisions about the best ways to manage or reduce risks that reflect a preference for avoiding unnecessary health risks instead of unnecessary economic expenditures when information about potential risks is incomplete.
Project XL An EPA initiative to give (as of 1996) six companies (Intel, Anheuser Busch, HADCO, Merck, AT&T Microelectronics, and 3M) and two government agencies (California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency) the flexibility to develop comprehensive strategies as alternatives to multiple current regulatory requirements to exceed compliance and increase overall environmental benefits.
public health context The incidence, prevalence, and severity of diseases in communities and populations and the factors that account for such problems that can be reduced or prevented, including smoking, alcohol consumption, poor diet, motor vehicle accidents, infections, chemical exposures, and other common voluntary and involuntary exposures or activities.
public health approach Focuses on effective and feasible risk management actions at the community level to reduce exposures and risks, with priority given to reducing exposures with the biggest impacts in terms of the number of people affected and severity of effect.
residual risk The health risk remaining after risk reduction actions are implemented, such as risks associated with sources of air pollution that remain after the implementation of maximum achievable control technology.
risk The probability of a specific outcome, generally adverse, given a particular set of conditions.
risk assessment An organized process used to describe and estimate the likelihood of adverse health outcomes from environmental exposures to chemicals. The four steps are hazard identification, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment, and risk characterization.
risk characterization The process of organizing, evaluating, and communicating information about the nature, strength of evidence, and likelihood of adverse health or ecological effects from particular exposures.
risk management The process of analyzing, selecting, implementing, and evaluating actions to reduce risk.
screening risk assessment A risk assessment performed using few data and many assumptions to identify exposures that should be evaluated more carefully for their potential risks.
toxicity The adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms.
value of information Value-of-information techniques provide an analytic framework for deciding whether it is better to make a decision now based on an inherently uncertain risk assessment as to collect additional information first and then decide.
weight of the scientific evidence Considerations involved in assessing the interpretation of published information about toxicity—quality of testing methods, size and power of the study design, consistency of results across studies, and biological plausibility of exposure-response relationships and statistical associations.