July 16, 1998

Genevieve S. Roessler, Editor
Risk newsletter
RRI Box 139H
Elysian MN 56028
By email: Hard copy follows by first class mail.

Dear Ms Roessler:

Please consider the attached letter for publication in RISK newsletter. I am emailing copies of this note and the letter to Yacov Y. Haimes, Gail Charnley, and Steve Brown at the same time I email you.

Sincerely,

Michael Gough, Fellow

 July 16, 1998

Editor
Risk newsletter
RRI Box 139H
Elysian MN 56028

Dear Editor:

Two articles in the newsletter, second quarter 1998, cause me to worry about SRA. Perhaps I am alone in my reactions, but if other SRA members agree with me, I would like to hear from them.

I can imagine nothing worse for risk assessment than SRA's being successful in its appeal for federal funding to "create a national program for training and building research capacity in risk analysis." Yacov Haimes' letter seeking support for the "Proposed National Centers for Risk Analysis" (newsletter, second quarter 1998, p. 2) states that the nation spends $600 billion annually on regulatory programs, with most of it spent on "reducing risks to human health, safety, and the environment." He says that a $6 billion savings would follow if better risk assessment improves "the effectiveness" of regulations by one percent. There's nothing wrong with the arithmetic, but that's about all that I can agree with in the letter.

Implicit in Dr. Haimes' hope that risk assessment can improve regulatory programs is the acknowledgement that regulatory programs are wasteful. Of course they are. There's abundant evidence that health, safety, and environment regulations cost billions of dollars. How effective are regulations? Who knows? In many cases, the risks from exposures to chemicals or radiation are so small that their predicted consequences cannot be detected. By the same token, any reduction in those consequences that result from risk management actions cannot be detected, let alone measured. Effectiveness measurement is a pipe dream.

In the United States, most health and environment risk assessors are employed by either the government or regulated industries. There is constant disagreement between the former, armed with government-produced guidelines about how to estimate risks, and the latter, who often enter the fray with much better data, analyses, and insights. Better data, analyses, and insights have little chance against guidelines. The guidelines allow government risk assessors to select the data they like, analyze it according to methods that produce estimates that justify regulations, and dismiss insights that do not support the pro-regulation biases that infuse government policy.

To tie risk assessment education to government funding can do nothing but strengthen the government's lock on the practice and interpretation of risk assessment. It takes no imagination to see how easy it will be to discredit a non-government risk assessor, trained in a non-government-funded university program, or, worse, in industry. How could he possibly be any good? He hasn't benefited from training at a "National Center."

The idea of the Environmental Protection Agency being "a logical potential source of support for this initiative" is hilarious. EPA is a regulatory agency, famous for its expensive regulations. Does anyone think it would underwrite research that could lead to conclusions that its regulations have wasted billions of dollars?

EPA writes the risk assessment guidelines that use "science policy choices," (whatever happened to the word "assumptions"?) that render science impotent. Those "choices," which encompass all kinds of policy preferences and little science, allow EPA officials to brush aside solid scientific findings and well-grounded inferences with word constructions that include "might," "could," "it's possible," "in some cases." Of course it "might," and it "could," and "it's possible" "in some cases." To say otherwise runs smack into the problems of proving a negative.

Those terms can negate any risk assessment. The words "might" etc. can trump any assessment that reveals no support for EPA's risk estimates.

Every review of "EPA science" has concluded that it's weak. A lot of that science is, in fact, focused on risk assessment. That's hardly a track record that would lead anyone to expect great things from a science-based risk assessment research and training program located there.

Some of EPA's recent attempts in risk assessment have been slapped down. I think there're two reasons for that. Recognizing the waste and cost of EPA's regulations, regulated industries are confronting the agency's poor science and policy-ridden risk assessments. Equally or more important, scientists see how EPA's misuse of "science" to hide policy choices corrupts science and the public's understanding of science. Science is a method to understand the physical world; it depends on observations and measurements. It is not based on consensus or policy choices about interpretations of data. For whatever reasons, EPA finds it difficult to respond to its critics. Its re-write of the "Dioxin Re-assessment," promised for late 1995 has yet to see the light of day; its revised "Cancer Risk Assessment Guidelines" disappeared soon after their release in 1996.

I have much more respect for the quality of science supported by the National Science Foundation, I don't have real first-hand knowledge of the risk assessment research sponsored by it, and I will not speculate about a "National Centers" program that might be supported from there. Such specificity is not necessary to deal with the fundamental problem in the appeal for federal support of risk assessment research and training.

Dr. Haimes says that the SRA Council "is concerned that the demand for qualified professionals and scientists will undoubtedly outstrip the number of well-trained people in the field." What is the source of concern other than opinion? The NSF's 1980s prediction of an impending shortfall of scientists disappeared among wails from graduate students and post-docs in all disciplines who were unable to find suitable employment. Has the Council polled student and post-doc members of SRA to learn about their employment opportunities? Or, for that matter, members who are now employed?

What if the demand for well-trained people outstrips the supply? Students, learning of the job opportunities, will demand courses and degrees; colleges and universities, knowing of the demand, will offer course and degrees, and private industry, needing such talents will contribute to the training. Markets work.

The Council's plea for money looks like rent-seeking. If the money is forthcoming, the Council and the members it represents are willing to take it.

Whatever else environmental organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council have accomplished, they have not earned high marks for science. Moreover, their general reaction to risk assessment is disdain. That's no surprise. Science and risk assessment can reveal that "common sense" "I just know that…," and the "will of the people," while justified on emotional or policy grounds, has no solid footing in observation or measurement.

The keynote speaker for the 1998 annual meeting is a Senior Attorney for NRDC (newsletter, second quarter 1998, p. 3). I have no quarrel with Mr. Kennedy's qualifications; he's probably an accomplished and skillful litigator and representative of his organization. I do object to his being honored as the keynote speaker by SRA, an organization that is committed to the fullest use of science, objectivity, and analysis.

SRA members who are interested in the role of policy in risk assessment at EPA may want to read a paper by Wendy E. Wagner. The title of the paper, "The Science Charade in Toxic Risk Regulation," Columbia Law Review 95(1995):1613-1732, says it all. Ms Wagner, formerly a lawyer with EPA, describes example after example where EPA officials hid policy decisions behind the science charade. David Schoenbrod is a co-founder of NRDC and a former senior attorney for that organization. His book Power Without Responsibility: How Congress Abuses the People Through Delegation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993) describes how Congress delegates legislative authority to Executive Branch agencies and the interactions between those agencies and business groups and environmental organizations (both "special interests") that burden us all with regulations for which Congress takes no responsibility.

Sincerely,

Michael Gough, Fellow