Health risks in perspective: Judging health risks of energy technologies
Abstract
Almost daily, Americans receive reports from the mass news media about some new and frightening risk to health and welfare. Most such reports emphasize the newsworthiness of the risks -- the possibility of a crisis, disagreements among experts, how things happened, who is responsible for fixing them, how much will it cost, conflict among parties involved, etc. As a rule, the magnitudes of the risks, or the difficulty of estimating those magnitudes, have limited newsworthiness, and so they are not mentioned. Because of this emphasis in the news media, most people outside the risk assessment community must judge the relative significance of the various risks to which we all are exposed with only that information deemed newsworthy by reporters. This information is biased and shows risks in isolation. There is no basis for understanding and comparing the relative importance of risks among themselves, or for comparing one risk, perhaps a new or newly-discovered one, in the field of all risks. The purpose of this report is to provide perspective on the various risks to which we are routinely exposed. It serves as a basis for understanding the meaning of quantitative risk estimates and for comparing new or newly-discovered risks withmore »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 10189060
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-49434
ON: DE94001489
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-76CH00016
- Resource Type:
- Technical Report
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 18 Sep 1992
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS//MATHEMATICS, COMPUTING, AND INFORMATION SCIENCE; TECHNOLOGY UTILIZATION; HEALTH HAZARDS; ENERGY CONSUMPTION; PUBLIC HEALTH; SAFETY; PUBLIC OPINION; DATA ANALYSIS; ENVIRONMENT; MORTALITY; 552000
Citation Formats
Rowe, M D. Health risks in perspective: Judging health risks of energy technologies. United States: N. p., 1992.
Web. doi:10.2172/10189060.
Rowe, M D. Health risks in perspective: Judging health risks of energy technologies. United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/10189060
Rowe, M D. 1992.
"Health risks in perspective: Judging health risks of energy technologies". United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/10189060. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/10189060.
@article{osti_10189060,
title = {Health risks in perspective: Judging health risks of energy technologies},
author = {Rowe, M D},
abstractNote = {Almost daily, Americans receive reports from the mass news media about some new and frightening risk to health and welfare. Most such reports emphasize the newsworthiness of the risks -- the possibility of a crisis, disagreements among experts, how things happened, who is responsible for fixing them, how much will it cost, conflict among parties involved, etc. As a rule, the magnitudes of the risks, or the difficulty of estimating those magnitudes, have limited newsworthiness, and so they are not mentioned. Because of this emphasis in the news media, most people outside the risk assessment community must judge the relative significance of the various risks to which we all are exposed with only that information deemed newsworthy by reporters. This information is biased and shows risks in isolation. There is no basis for understanding and comparing the relative importance of risks among themselves, or for comparing one risk, perhaps a new or newly-discovered one, in the field of all risks. The purpose of this report is to provide perspective on the various risks to which we are routinely exposed. It serves as a basis for understanding the meaning of quantitative risk estimates and for comparing new or newly-discovered risks with other, better-understood risks. Specific emphasis is placed on health risks of energy technologies.},
doi = {10.2172/10189060},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/10189060},
journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Sep 18 00:00:00 EDT 1992},
month = {Fri Sep 18 00:00:00 EDT 1992}
}