Final Program World Congress on Risk - The Society for Risk Analysis

Monday Mini-Symposia 2:00 - 3:30 pm (continued)
Room: Mezzo
M-MS.9 Children’s Environmental Health— Risk Assessment
Issues (Part 1)
Organizer: Dale Hattis, Clark University
Speakers: Sonawane, B. (US Environmental Protection Agency);
Thompson, K. (Harvard University); Sips, A. (Netherlands, National
Institute of Public Health and the Environment); Hattis, D. (Clark University);
Faustman, E. (University of Washington)
It is now a truism that people from life stages between fertilization
and adolescence cannot always be accurately represented by
simple scaling rules as “little adults”. This symposium will bring
together researchers involved in quantification of chemical health
risks during fetal life and childhood. An introductory discussion will
be given by Bob Sonawane of the USEPA, “Children’s Environmental
Health Risks, a Global Problem of Concern.” Early life stages are
particularly of interest for a <strong>World</strong> <strong>Congress</strong> that must include concerns
for less developed countries in part because of a younger age
structure in developing countries. Subsequent presentations will follow
the causal chain from exposure to response, followed by a panel
discussion on risk management perspectives involving all the presenters
plus Dennis Paustenbach of Exponent Corp.: Kimberly Thompson
of the Harvard School of Public Health will speak on “Characterization
of Childrens Exposures to Environmental Health Hazards.”
She will focus on the risk assessment issues posed by the fact
that children have distinctive behaviors not present or much less
prominent than in adults. Loeckie de Zwart will present a paper
covering work by herself and colleagues at the National Institute of
Public Health and the Environment of the Netherlands on “Risk Assessment
in Children: Role of Pediatric PBPK Models.” Case studies
from pharmaceuticals should be seen as a first step in developing
tools for assessing the relationships between external and internal
dose rates in children vs adults. Dale Hattis of Clark University will
then report on his work modeling interindividual variability in parameters
affecting toxic susceptibility in children. <strong>Final</strong>ly, prior to the
panel, Elaine Faustman will discuss the importance of “windows of
vulnerability” during fetal and child development and other aspects
of the toxicodynamics of early life biological responses. Terry Damstra
of WHO and Bob Sonawane of USEPA will chair the symposium.
Room: Tempo
M-MS.10 Comparing Regional, Regulatory and Disciplinary
Methods for Defining and Managing Uncertainty
Organizer: David Hassenzahl, University of Nevada - Las Vegas
Speakers: Hassenzahl, D.M. (University of Nevada Las Vegas);
Clauberg, M. (Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH); Purvis, K.
(Claremont Colleges); Ezzati, M. (Resources for the Future / WHO);
Goble, R. (Clark University)
Comparing regional, regulatory and disciplinary methods for
defining and managing uncertainty David Hassenzahl, University of
Nevada Las Vegas This mini-symposium draws on a range of disciplinary
perspectives to identify salutary approaches to managing
uncertainty, and the tension between the inevitability of uncertainty
and ideological preference for risk-based decision rules. Uncertainty
has been variously defined in the risk literature, and differentially
treated by decision-making bodies. While some of definitions
have been more effective than others, and significant literatures have
been developed within agencies or government, little effort has been
done to compare approaches across agencies and governments.
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of different definitional and
institutional approaches will stimulate improved trans-boundary risk
decision-making. Several examples will be used to explore this issue.
Some recent work produced for the German Federal Risk
Commission provides an example of the German approach to environmental
standard-setting and its associated uncertainties. In this
context, risk communication is both a challenge and a starting point
for risk-related standard-setting. Several salient cases come from
the United States, including uncertainties in cost-effectiveness estimation
at the federal level, sorting methods explored in the New
Jersey Comparative Risk Project and ongoing FEMA mandated regional
vulnerability assessments. <strong>Final</strong>ly the use of language and
methods of risk analysis to explore evidence for and against the
existence of new and emerging risks may prove salutary for cases of
extreme uncertainty. These cases suggest a need to propagate,
rather than minimize, uncertainty; and need for further understanding
how to communicate uncertainty to diverse audiences; and a
need to avoid undermining or discrediting risk analysis by ignoring
uncertainty.
3:30 - 4:00 pm Poster Session/Coffee Break Ballroom Foyer
Monday Mini Symposia 4:00 - 5:30 pm
Room: Holbein
M-MS.11 Assessing the Human Health Risks Following
the Collapse of the <strong>World</strong> Trade Center Towers
(Part 2)
See M-MS.1 for abstract and speakers.
Room: Watteau 1
This Session Ends at 6:00 pm
M-MS.12 Social Amplification of Risk: Implications for
Risk Policy and Governance (Part 2)
See M-MS.2 for abstract and speakers.
13
Room: Watteau 2
M-MS.13 Responding to the 2001 Anthrax Bioterrorism
Attacks: Addressing the Risk Issues (Part 2)
See M-MS.3 for abstract and speakers.