An Existential Approach to Risk Perception

Existential, or existential-phenomenological philosophical approaches to the social psychology of risk perception provide a novel framework for understanding issues that are common to all humanity, such as fear of death, freedom and responsibility, isolation and meaninglessness, as these anxieties are a function of existing, or being-in-the-world. These fundamental anxieties can be related theoretically to the ways people perceive risks within social and cultural milieus, and can also be used practically within case studies, as demonstrated in the three examples presented, which examine perceptions of climate change, food-related risks, and environmental awareness via a mixture of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The discussion focuses on the possible insights that can be gained from taking an existential perspective on risk perception, and relates notions of contemporary technologically-oriented societies to the existential challenges faced by individuals and societies in the contemporary world.     

Scheduling Updates of Probabilistic Risk Assessments: The Arkansas Nuclear One-Unit 1 Experience

This paper presents the results of a study that identified how often a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA)should be updated to accommodate the changes that take place at nuclear power plants. Based on a 7-year analysis of design and procedural changes at one plant, we consider 5 years to be the maximum interval for updating PRAs. This conclusion is preliminary because it is based on the review of changes that occurred at a single plant, and it addresses only PRAs that involve a Level 1 analysis (i.e., a PRA including calculation of core damage frequency only). Nevertheless, this conclusion indicates that maintaining a useful PRA requires periodic updating efforts. However, the need for this periodic update stems only partly from the number of changes that can be expected to take place at nuclear power plants–changes that individually have only a moderate to minor impact on the PRA, but whose combined impact is substantial and necessitates a PRA update. Additionally, a comparison of two generations of PRAs performed about 5 years apart indicates that PRAs must be periodically updated to reflect the evolution of PRA methods. The most desirable updating interval depends on these two technical considerations as well as the cost of updating the PRA. (Cost considerations, however, were beyond the scope of this study.)     

Potential exposures and risks from beryllium-containing products.

Beryllium is the strongest of the lightweight metals. Used primarily in military applications prior to the end of the Cold War, beryllium is finding new applications in many commercial products, including computers, telecommunication equipment, and consumer and automotive electronics. The use of beryllium in nondefense consumer applications is of concern because beryllium is toxic. Inhalation of beryllium dust or vapor causes a chronic lung disease in some individuals at concentrations as low as 0.01 microg/m3 in air. As beryllium enters wider commerce, it is prudent to ask what risks this might present to the general public and to workers downstream of the beryllium materials industry. We address this question by evaluating the potential for beryllium exposure from the manufacturing, use, recycle, and disposal of beryllium-containing products. Combining a market study with a qualitative exposure analysis, we determine which beryllium applications and life cycle phases have the largest exposure potential. Our analysis suggests that use and maintenance of the most common types of beryllium-containing products do not result in any obvious exposures of concern, and that maintenance activities result in greater exposures than product use. Product disposal has potential to present significant individual risks, but uncertainties concerning current and future routes of product disposal make it difficult to be definitive. Overall, additional exposure and dose-response data are needed to evaluate both the health significance of many exposure scenarios, and the adequacy of existing regulations to protect workers and the public. Although public exposures to beryllium and public awareness and concern regarding beryllium risks are currently low, beryllium risks have psychometric qualities that may lead to rapidly heightened public concern.     

What to Do at Low Doses: A Bounding Approach for Economic Analysis

To quantify the health benefits of environmental policies, economists generally require estimates of the reduced probability of illness or death. For policies that reduce exposure to carcinogenic substances, these estimates traditionally have been obtained through the linear extrapolation of experimental dose-response data to low-exposure scenarios as described in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment (1986). In response to evolving scientific knowledge, EPA proposed revisions to the guidelines in 1996. Under the proposed revisions, dose-response relationships would not be estimated for carcinogens thought to exhibit nonlinear modes of action. Such a change in cancer-risk assessment methods and outputs will likely have serious consequences for how benefit-cost analyses of policies aimed at reducing cancer risks are conducted. Any tendency for reduced quantification of effects in environmental risk assessments, such as those contemplated in the revisions to EPA's cancer-risk assessment guidelines, impedes the ability of economic analysts to respond to increasing calls for benefit-cost analysis. This article examines the implications for benefit-cost analysis of carcinogenic exposures of the proposed changes to the 1986 Guidelines and proposes an approach for bounding dose-response relationships when no biologically based models are available. In spite of the more limited quantitative information provided in a carcinogen risk assessment under the proposed revisions to the guidelines, we argue that reasonable bounds on dose-response relationships can be estimated for low-level exposures to nonlinear carcinogens. This approach yields estimates of reduced illness for use in a benefit-cost analysis while incorporating evidence of nonlinearities in the dose-response relationship. As an illustration, the bounding approach is applied to the case of chloroform exposure.     

Dose-Response and Risk Assessment of Airborne Hexavalent Chromium and Lung Cancer Mortality

This study evaluates the dose-response relationship for inhalation exposure to hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)] and lung cancer mortality for workers of a chromate production facility, and provides estimates of the carcinogenic potency. The data were analyzed using relative risk and additive risk dose-response models implemented with both Poisson and Cox regression. Potential confounding by birth cohort and smoking prevalence were also assessed. Lifetime cumulative exposure and highest monthly exposure were the dose metrics evaluated. The estimated lifetime additional risk of lung cancer mortality associated with 45 years of occupational exposure to 1 microg/m3 Cr(VI) (occupational exposure unit risk) was 0.00205 (90%CI: 0.00134, 0.00291) for the relative risk model and 0.00216 (90%CI: 0.00143, 0.00302) for the additive risk model assuming a linear dose response for cumulative exposure with a five-year lag. Extrapolating these findings to a continuous (e.g., environmental) exposure scenario yielded an environmental unit risk of 0.00978 (90%CI: 0.00640, 0.0138) for the relative risk model [e.g., a cancer slope factor of 34 (mg/kg-day)-1] and 0.0125 (90%CI: 0.00833, 0.0175) for the additive risk model. The relative risk model is preferred because it is more consistent with the expected trend for lung cancer risk with age. Based on statistical tests for exposure-related trend, there was no statistically significant increased lung cancer risk below lifetime cumulative occupational exposures of 1.0 mg-yr/m3, and no excess risk for workers whose highest average monthly exposure did not exceed the current Permissible Exposure Limit (52 microg/m3). It is acknowledged that this study had limited power to detect increases at these low exposure levels. These cancer potency estimates are comparable to those developed by U.S. regulatory agencies and should be useful for assessing the potential cancer hazard associated with inhaled Cr(VI).     

Valuation of childhood risk reduction: the importance of age, risk preferences, and perspective.

This article explores two problems analysts face in determining how to estimate values for children's health and safety risk reductions. The first addresses the question: Do willingness‐to‐pay estimates for health risk changes differ across children and adults and, if so, how? To answer this question, the article first examines the potential effects of age and risk preferences on willingness to pay. A summary of the literature reporting empirical evidence of differences between willingness to pay for adult health and safety risk reductions and willingness to pay for health and safety risk reductions in children is also provided. The second dimension of the problem is a more fundamental issue: Whose perspective is relevant when valuing children's health effects—society's, children's, adults‐as‐children, or parents'? Each perspective is considered, followed ultimately by the conclusion that adopting a parental perspective through an intrahousehold allocation model seems closest to meeting the needs of the estimation problem at hand. A policy example in which the choice of perspective affects the outcome of a regulatory benefit‐cost analysis rounds out the article and emphasizes the importance of perspective.     

对降低中国农业生产风险的方式探讨

农业生产领域因其要受气候条件、自然灾害、技术的改变、信息的不完全、国家政策的变动,有着不同于其他行业的特殊风险性,而我国农户大多又是风险规避者,所以,如何降低农业生产中的风险,及如何看待降低风险的方式在中国的实效性问题,成为目前解决“三农”问题关键所在。     

商业银行中间业务及风险管理的几点思考

我国商业银行在中间业务发展上与外资银行相比存在较大的差距。面对外资银行进军中国市场的事实,我国商业银行只有大力发展中间业务才能抵抗外资银行的冲击。发展中间业务必定伴随着风险的出现,特别是与业务发展相关的风险巨大,银行自身必须从内部做好相关的风险防范与管理;同时,银行监督管理部门也要从外部做好相关的风险管理工作,来保障和促进商业银行中间业务的发展。     

高等教育持续升温原因的几点分析

本文针对我国目前的高等教育持续升温的现象,分析了当受教育群体对投资高等教育产品的预期收益率相对于其他投资商品的预期收益率过高时,理性的投资者依据投资效益最大化原理,将会导致高等教育产品的需求扩大;受教育群体收入水平与消费结构变化,同时也对我国高等教育需求过高的现象有一定的影响     

产品创新中管理集成平台的分析与设计

管理集成是产品创新管理的发展趋势之一。管理集成平台是复杂产品创新中管理集成实施的重要支撑技术。从管理集成平台的功能和构成出发,设计了一个管理集成平台的一般模型,它具有对外部环境变化的快速反应功能,能正确规划产品开发过程的有关资源,从而有利于提高产品创新管理。