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SRA
Risk Science & Law Specialty Group |
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| 1999-2000
Online Casebook (Second Edition)
Sierra Club v. Utah Solid and Hazardous Waste Control Board Is the public interest served by "regulatory risk assessments" that very often exaggerate the realistic exposures, doses and health risks by screening the potential risks under assumed, hypothetical worst-case conditions? Environmental, anti-chemical weapons, and veterans groups sued to prevent the testing of a chemical weapons incineration facility in Tooele County, Utah. The Deseret Chemical Depot stockpiles more than two-fifths of the nation's tonnage of chemical warfare agents. For screening purposes, the risk assessment of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality used assumptions that "intentionally overstat[e] what is known to be true." This case [964 P.2d 335 (Utah App. 1998)] draws attention to the poor scientific credibility of EPA-approved regulatory risk assessment methodology that, as a matter of conservative policy, seeks to set risk calculations at the upper limits of potential exposure and dose. The rationale is that if calculations show inflated screening risks would not be exceeded, then subsequent detailed risk analysis using more realistic assumptions could be waived. The State Court of Appeals found that: § A conservative Screening Risk Assessment (SRA) means "numerous assumptions of calculation procedures that result in a broad margin of safety between the calculated risk estimate . . . and the likely risk to human health." § The SRA makes assumptions that "intentionally overstat[e] what is known to be true. It determines plausible upper limits of risk, not any actual probability or risk of harm." § Sierra Club bases its dioxin arguments largely upon the SRA which, by its very nature, was never intended to provide accurate, specific numbers regarding actual . . . operations. For instance, exposure periods much longer (10 years, 15 years, 30 years) than any trial incinerator burn, indeed, even longer than the planned seven-year, long-term burn, were used in the SRA. So were assumptions of simultaneous, full-scale, year-round operations around the clock, all without exceeding acceptable limits of risk. The court held that plaintiffs erred in taking the results obtained thereby at face value. Specifically, if the SRA had assumed the possibility of downwind, locally-produced dairy products consumed locally, the SRA risk of cancer from dioxin would have risen to the conservatively allowable limits in the long term. But the State argued it was entitled to permit the test burn because risks based on human exposure via milk were irrelevant; no dairy farming or even home consumption of subsistence milk production in fact occurred in the area. Moreover, there was no established reference dose for infants and, besides, the marginally unacceptable long-term risk could never be inferred for the trial burn. This case suggests that agencies and courts are able to understand and account for intended conservatism in risk assessments, as long as the assumptions in question are fully disclosed. A policy-driven risk assessment, instead of a strictly scientific risk analysis, when taken at face value and viewed as scientifically sound, could be highly misleading. [Contributed by John Applegate/Edited by Wayne Roth-Nelson] |
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