Measuring Environmental Health Risks
The Negotiation of a Public Right-to-Know Law
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5338104 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joshua Dunsby (University of California, San Francisco, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 269-290 |
| Publication date | 2004-07-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0162243904264482 |
| OpenAlex | W2160067706 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 11 |
Quantitative health risk assessment is a procedure for estimating the likelihood that exposure to environmental contaminants will produce certain adverse health effects, most commonly cancer. One instance of its use has been a California air toxics public "right-to-know" law. This article examines the ways in which credible health risk measurements were produced and challenged during the implementation of the California public policy. Fieldwork and documentary analysis finds that stakeholders negotiated within the formal constraints of the risk assessment procedures but still expressed their competing visions for the implementation of the risk communication policy. The abstract results of the method were contextualized according to different time frames and allocations of uncertainty. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the political process privileged consistency of measurement over accuracy, revealing political negotiations at a fundamentally technical level. The struggle and variation in interpretations can be explained best by the demand to organize the program around the discordant values of democratic accountability and technical efficiency
Accountability · Actuarial science · Business · Democracy · Economics · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Public health · Right to know · Risk assessment · Sociology · Vision · Computer Science · Environmental Justice and Health Disparities · Law · Medicine · Public Administration · Regulation and Compliance Studies · Risk Perception and Management
Negotiating credibility and legitimacy in the shadow of an authoritative data source
Scales of environmental justice
The US’ Food and Drug Administration, Normativity of Risk Assessment, GMOs, and American Democracy
Risk Assessment of Genetically Modified Food and Neoliberalism
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Evaluation of the Safety of Animal Clones
Lives Versus Livelihoods? Deepening the Regulatory Debates on Soil Fumigants in California's Strawberry Industry
Whose Life Counts
Managing Risk, Reinforcing Environmental Racism
Organizations, uncertainties, and risk
Changing order
Purity and Danger
How Fair Is Safe Enough? The Cultural Approach to Societal Technology Choice 1
Handbook for Environmental Risk Decision Making
Science Policy, Ethics, and Economic Methodology
Risk Analysis and Risk Management
Science and Judgment in Risk Assessment
Trust in Numbers
Contested Boundaries in Policy-Relevant Science
Purity and Danger
| Citations per year | 0.38 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2005 - 2025 (21) |
| Highly cited | No |