Name
Section
ENVR 1401 – BACKGROUND & EXERCISE
Overview
Lab 11 – How Risky Is It?
The objectives of this lab activity are to:
Understand the difference between hazard and risk
Discover why one’s own risk perception may be different from another individual’s perception of risk
Rank health, safety, and environmental problems in terms of risk and explain the reasoning for the rankings
Virtually every activity we participate in involves some risk….from the moment we apply antiperspirant in the morning to drinking that morning coffee (may contain numerous natural and man-made carcinogens) to driving (air pollution from automobile emissions, talking on a cell phone while driving) to work. We read the labels in the grocery stores, scanning for fat content or various preservatives. We regulate our coffee intake and the speed we drive. There are many types of health hazards or risks that we unconsciously weigh every day. We come into contact with many substances, many unknowingly. Some may have the potential to cause adverse health effects, but how do we know if we are at risk of becoming ill from exposure to these substances? Will I get cancer? What’s my risk from pesticides? Is my health in danger from chemicals?
Practically speaking, these are all relevant questions but the most important thing to consider is that it is not the toxicity (the degree to which a substance is poisonous) of a substance but the hazard associated with its use that causes the potential risk. Therefore, we can define hazard as any event or circumstance that threatens or jeopardizes the health or safety of an individual or groups of individuals, such as exposure (the potential for a person to come in contact with a contaminant) to chemicals.
The four types of hazards are described as follows:
Cultural hazards are societal problems such as drug use, alcohol consumption, unsafe sex, poor diet, poverty, and working conditions.
Chemical hazards are environmental exposures from air, water, soil or food and may include both naturally occurring and man-made chemicals.
Physical hazards include earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fire, and radiation.
Biological hazards include disease-causing organisms (e.g., bacteria, viruses or parasites), allergens, and poisonous plants and animals (e.g., spiders, bees, or snakes).
Risk then can be defined as the probability or chance of harm occurring to cause injury, disease, environmental, social, or financial damage.
Risk = (probability of event occurring) x (impact of event occurring)
For example, if we say that your risk of being hit by a car is 1 in 10,000, that is the same as saying that the probability that you will be hit by a car is 1 in 10,000 (which can also be expressed as 0.01% or 0.0001).
Not all risks have the same consequences and are not likely to occur at the same rate. Although the term “risk” is generally associated with negative outcomes, that is not always the case. An example of a risk with a possible positive or negative outcome is the risk you take when buying a lottery ticket. With a very small initial investment, you risk a gain or loss.
What constitutes an acceptable risk is a matter of judgment by an individual or a society. Some questions that should be asked when determining acceptable risk include the following:
What are the benefits gained from use of the substance?
Are there alternatives available?
Will there be an economic impact?
Will environmental quality be affected?
Will use/exposure affect the public?
Are there employment considerations?
Will use/exposure affect natural resources?
How will it affect public opinions?
Are there any social impacts to be considered?
Risk perception is the subjective judgment that people make about the characteristics and severity or likelihood of risk. It examines attitudes toward risk, the levels of acceptable risk, and the behavior in response to their perception of risk. Risks of varying types are often perceived differently by individuals or groups of people. This difference in risk perception is based on education, ethnic background, familiarity, past experience, personal values, emotionalism, personal bias, religion, and many other socioeconomic factors. Much of our perception or misperception about risk is shaped by media distortions or misconceptions.
Information revealed from psychological experiments suggests that individuals have a difficult time determining the relative risks in many activities. We also often have a hard time ranking the frequency of many causes of death, because some exposures, such as floods and motor vehicle accidents are catastrophic and highly publicized, while other causes such as obesity and diabetes are chronic and are not as dramatic in causing death. In addition, the public (lay people) focuses on qualitative (opinioned observations) risk characteristics, whereas experts evaluate risk using scientifically derived estimates of the risk severity and likelihood of injury or death. Studies have shown that lay people tend to view chemicals as harmful or safe regardless of the dose or exposure. On the other hand, experts are more likely to take into account the dose and exposure to a chemical when evaluating risk.
Several authors have identified behavioral factors that may affect the perceptions that people have about risks. Some of these factors are described in the table on the following page. An individual can minimize the impact of a potential risk by modifying one’s exposure, modifying the effects of the exposure and/or plan for compensating effects (health and life insurance, law suits, legal settlements). For instance, the chances of dying in an automobile accident in 1953 was four times greater than in 2003, based on fatalities per mile driven in the United States. Some of this difference can be attributed to better roads, improvement in medical care and tougher drunk- driving laws. At the same time, there was considerable improvement in vehicle safety features (e.g., power brakes, antilock brakes, radial tires, lap and shoulder safety belts, and dual air bags) over the 50-year period
Behavioral Factors That May Affect Perceptions About Risks
Factor Example
Natural substances or situations may be
perceived as less risky than manmade substances or situations. People may fear radon from radium-
contaminated industrial waste more than they fear naturally occurring radon in homes (which causes 14,000 deaths from cancer per year).
Voluntary exposures or activities may be
perceived as less risky than involuntary exposures or activities. Voluntary activities such as sun tanning or
smoking may be considered less risky than involuntary exposures such as chemicals in drinking water or pesticides in food. Yet the risks related to sun tanning and smoking are clearly much larger than those related to chemicals in drinking water.
Situations and outcomes that inspire
dread may be considered riskier than those that are not dreaded. Women fear breast cancer (a dreaded disease)
much more than heart disease. In a 1997 poll American women ranked breast cancer as the leading risk for their health. Yet heart disease is responsible for 30% of deaths in American women, whereas breast cancer accounts for only 3%.
Familiar substances and activities may be
perceived as less risky than unfamiliar substances and activities. People tend to overestimate the danger of rare
events, such as a plane crash, yet underestimate dangers of more common events like driving a car. Yet motor vehicle accidents are responsible for many more deaths every year than plane crashes.
Chronic activities or exposures may be
perceived as less risky than catastrophic activities or exposures. Smoking kills 350,000 people a year. But much
greater fear would be experienced if 350,000 people died on a single day in a single city.
Controllable substances and activities may be
perceived as less risky than uncontrollable ones. One of the reasons people fear airplane
crashes more than they fear car accidents may be that they believe they control the safety of their own car more than the safety of a plane.
Situations that are memorable because of
personal experience, experience of friends or family, or news reports may be perceived as more risky than situations that are not memorable. News reports about severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) in recent months may have contributed to the public’s fear of this disease, even though other infectious diseases, such as influenza pose much greater risk
Source: Baumgarten and McCrary, 2004
References
Baumgarten, Mona and McCrary, Felicia, 2004, The Young Epidemiology Program (YES), Risk Perception, http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/yes/risk_perception.pdf, accessed October 9, 2009.
American Forest Foundation, 2005, Project Learning Tree, Activity Revision, Exploring Environmental Issues: Focus on Risk module: Things Aren’t Always What They Seem, http://www.plt.org/cms/pages/21_21_14.html, accessed October 9, 2009.
Part A – Risk Perception
Examine the causes of death listed in Table 1.
Table 1
Selected Causes of Death, United States, 2000 (All Ages)
Accidents (all kinds)
Accidents (motor vehicle)
Alcohol (deaths directly attributable to alcohol, plus liver disease)
Alzheimer’s disease
Bicycle accident
Bioterrorist attack with anthrax
Cancer
Drowning
Fire
Food poisoning
Heart disease
Homicide
Lightning
Stroke
Suicide
Source: Baumgarten and McCrary, 2004
1.Which three causes of death do you think are responsible for the greatest and the fewest number of deaths per year in the United States?
Causes of greatest number of Causes of fewest number of deaths
deaths in the US annually the US annually
Now examine Table 2, which presents the mortality risks per 100,000 of population for these causes of death.
Table 2. Mortality Risk per 100,000, by Selected Causes of Death, United States, 2000 (All Ages)
Cause of Death Mortality Risk /100,000
Heart disease 251.8892
Cancer 195.6947
Stroke 58.8582
Accidents (all kinds) 33.1785
Alzheimer’s disease 17.3853
Alcohol (direct, plus liver disease) 16.1031
Accidents (motor vehicle) 14.8258
Suicide 8.2706
Homicide 6.4767
Food poisoning 1.7723
Drowning 1.5617
Fire 1.2052
Bicycle accident 0.2658
Lightning 0.0223
Bioterrorist attack with anthrax 0.0018
Source: Baumgarten and McCrary, 2004
2a. Were you able to rank the three most important and least YES NO
important causes of death from question 1?
2b. List two reasons why your rankings might have been incorrect?
Completing an Environmental Risk Survey
3a. Complete the attached Environmental Risk Survey, considering how important these risk items are to you. Carefully read the question and then for each risk item, circle or highlight the number that best represents your view.
Environmental Risk Survey
Environmental Issue / Potential Concern Not Important Intermediate Very Important
1. Acid rain caused by the deposition of acid producing Sulphur dioxide into streams and on forests, usually from the burning of coal.
1
2
3
4
5
2. Global warming caused by excessive amounts of greenhouse gases like
carbon dioxide and methane that may lead to weather extremes, such as temperature increases, flooding, sea level rise, extreme storms.
1
2
3
4
5
3. The Ozone hole caused by ozone-depleting substances like refrigerants (e.g.,
Freon) that reduce the protective ozone layer and lead to an increase in ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Also known as stratospheric ozone depletion.
1
2
3
4
5
4. Drilling for oil from offshore drilling platforms along the coasts and on federal
lands (e.g., Alaska National Wildlife Refuge) and the transportation of oil and petroleum products (e.g., pipelines, tank trucks and supertankers) that may result in spills.
1
2
3
4
5
5. Hazardous waste sites which may release toxic chemicals into streams and estuaries and landscapes.
1
2
3
4
5
6. Radiation: Release of radioactive materials associated with nuclear power
generation.
1
2
3
4
5
7. Persistent and toxic organic pollutants (e.g., PCB’s, DDT, dioxin, toluene,
benzene) discharged into surface streams or the air from chemical manufacturing
plants. These chemicals are long-lived in the environment and can be transported great distances.
1
2
3
4
5
8. Heavy metals like lead, zinc, and cadmium released into surface waters from
mining operations and mercury released from the burning of coal.
1
2
3
4
5
9. Pesticides: Insecticides used to treat insect pests; herbicides used to treat
weeds; and rodenticides used to kill animal pests (e.g., gophers, prairie dogs).
1
2
3
4
5
10. Eutrophication: the over-enrichment of waters due to nitrogen fertilizer run-off and nitrogen oxide deposition in watersheds. This may lead to algal blooms and depletion of dissolved oxygen in rivers and coastal waters.
1
2
3
4
5
11. Sewage: Untreated sewage dumped from cruise ships and treated sewage
from waste water treatment plants discharged into streams.
1
2
3
4
5
12. The growing of genetically engineered crops (e.g., corn); also known as
genetically modified organisms or GMO’s.
1
2
3
4
5
13. Invasive species: plants like kudzu and cheat grass and animals like zebra
mussels.
1
2
3
4
5
14. Clear-cut logging of large tracts of forests for pulp, paper and wood products. 1 2 3 4 5
15. Destruction and fragmentation of wildlife habitat due to urbanization and
suburban sprawl.
1
2
3
4
5
16. Damming of rivers for electric power generation, flood control, navigation, and
recreation
1
2
3
4
5
17. Destruction and loss of wetlands by residential, commercial, industrial,
agricultural or recreational development.
1
2
3
4
5
18. Surface run-off (also known as non-point pollution) contaminated with agricultural chemicals and sediment
1
2
3
4
5
19. Mountain top mining: A technique that removes portions of mountain tops to
reveal an ore seam (e.g., coal). The mined residue is then used as fill material that may alter the landscape.
1
2
3
4
5
20. Overgrazing of range and pasture lands by excessive livestock on a specific
area.
1
2
3
4
5
21. Entrainment and impingement of fish in water intake pipes at power plants
and hydroelectric dams
1
2
3
4
5
22. Sport fishing (e.g., fishing for bass, trout, catfish, deep sea and coastal fish)
and sport hunting (e.g., hunting for deer, squirrels, waterfowl and other wildlife).
1
2
3
4
5
23. Commercial fishing (e.g., fishing for tuna, lobsters or crabs for human consumption).
1
2
3
4
5
24. Worldwide human population growth. 1 2 3 4 5
SOURCE: American Forest Foundation 2005
3b. What are the top five risk items you ranked the highest?
3c. What are the top five risk items you feel the class will rank the highest?
3d. List three factors that determined how important a risk item was to you:
3e. Explain how your level of exposure to these items influences your scoring?
3f. List the three risks that are least familiar to you:
3g. Explain how lack of familiarity affects your scoring.
Part B – Local Environmental Risk
To identify the possible risks in your own community, use the following website, type in
your zip code and respond to the following questions:
http://www.epa.gov/myenvironment/
If the above link is not working. You may need to use the snapshot archive website due to changes in our current government administration. https://www3.epa.gov/myem/envmap/find.html
What is your zip code? County State________
What is Cancer Risk Estimate (Inhalation) for your location? (scroll down to the My Health section on the website. Your answer will be expressed in Total Risk per Million).
What is the highest-ranking pollutant for that risk? (this is listed below the Total Risk per Million on the website).
What is the percentage?
What do you think is the source of that pollutant is? (you may need to research use of that pollutant).
What is the Air Quality Index (AQI) forecast for your location today? Good, Moderate, Unhealthy? (This can be found under the My Air section of the website).
Take a look at the AQI Report. What pollutant is responsible for the highest AQI for your location? (This is found under the My Air section of the website, by clicking on More AQI information. A new website will open and display the current results)
What is the name and address of the Hazardous waste reporter that is closest to you? (You will need to click on the My Land section of the website, then within the loaded map you will see an icon in the top left corner, click it and then select the hazardous waste and superfund tab to locate the places closest to your home).
What is the name and address of the Superfund Waste Site that is nearest to your location?
What is the name of the watershed for your location?
Save your document as a PDF and attach and submit within the link in the lab 11, week 14 folder. Next, complete step 1 on Part C below that is part of the lab assignment for next week. Reach out to your group members by creating a thread on the group discussion board topic (after you enroll into a group) and post what 3 topics are of most concern, or you feel have the most risk associated with them.
Part C – Group Risk Assessment Paper
You will need to enroll into a lab group within the lab 12, Week 15 folder to complete this lab assignment. (Click on Group Risk Assessment Paper link).
Once you have group members, each group member needs to write one paragraph (minimum 250 words) detailing what three environmental issues they felt are of most concern regarding the Environmental Risk Survey on page 6 from lab 11, AND to include a graph (line graph, bar graph, pie chart) covering some aspect of the risk you feel is most concerning. You will need to conduct an internet search to find data to graph, or a chart to replicate, but be sure to include the source of the data. Explain what the graph details within you section. Each group member needs to include a graph within their section of the paper.
Each group member has a responsibility. Designate one person to be the team leader, one person the Summary writer, one person the Introduction writer and one person the Comparison writer. Here is each team members responsibilities:
Team leader: In addition to their paragraph, they are responsible for proof-reading and finalizing the finishing details to the paper. Team leaders need to make a cover page and list each team member name and team role within the paper process. Team leaders are responsible for sending the group the final paper to submit on ecampus – every team member must submit the final paper to receive a grade.
Introduction writer: In addition to their paragraph, they are responsible for writing an introduction paragraph that examines what risk is and why we may perceive it differently.
Comparison writer: In addition to their paragraph, they are responsible for an additional paragraph that compares and contrasts the different perceptions of risk discussed from each group member.
Summary writer: In addition to their paragraph, they are responsible for an additional paragraph that summarizes the paper and wraps up the discussion.
Each group member then needs to submit the final group paper on ecampus using the Submit Your Group Paper Here link within the Lab 12, Week 15 folder.
Once each group member has submitted the final group paper on ecampus, each member must then complete the Team Assessment Survey. This is a survey that only the professor sees and is required to evaluate the group’s teamwork on this project.
