This study examines a key component of environmental risk communication; trust and credibility. The study was conducted in two parts. In the first part, six hypotheses regarding the perceptions and determinants of trust and credibility were tested against survey data. The hypotheses were supported by the data. The most important hypothesis was that perceptions of trust and credibility are dependent on three factors: perceptions of knowledge and expertise; perceptions of openness and honesty; and perceptions of concern and care. In the second part, models were constructed with perceptions of trust and credibility as the dependent variable. The goal was to examine the data for findings with direct policy implications. One such finding was that defying a negative stereotype is key to improving perceptions of trust and credibility.

Environmental risk communication is examined as a community-based public health issue in this study. It provides data on information dynamics in six communities prior to the implementation of national community right-to-know legislation. It also provides a baseline for measuring changes in knowledge, attitudes, information gathering activities and other behaviors. Respondents (3,129) from six communities, Albuquerque, New Mexico; Cincinnati, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina; Middlesex County, New Jersey; Racine, Wisconsin; and Richmond, Virginia, provided information about recall of environmental risk information and sources, as well as personal knowledge, attitudes and behaviors related to environmental health risks. Local media are the most pervasive source of environmental information. Interpersonal sources were reported by fewer than 12% of the respondents. Credibility appears to be the most valuable attribute of an environmental information source. Credibility and expertise are perceived as independent characteristics by the public. More and more diverse information sources and higher levels of consumer interest are needed to involve the public effectively in environmental issues. Future comparison studies in these communities will illustrate more fully how to achieve responsible community involvement in environmental health issues.

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Onshore wind turbine foundations are generally over-engineered as their internal stress states are challenging to directly monitor during operation. While there are industry drivers to shift towards more economical foundation designs, making this transition safely will require new monitoring techniques, so that the uncertainties around structural health can be reduced. This paper presents the initial results of a real-time strain monitoring campaign for an operating wind turbine foundation. Selected reinforcement bars were instrumented with metal packaged optical fibre strain sensors prior to concrete casting. In this paper, we outline the sensors’ design, characterisation and installation, and present 67 days of operational data. During this time, measured foundation strains did not exceed 95 sans-serifμsans-serifϵ, and showed a strong correlation with both measured tower displacements and the results of a foundation finite element model. The work demonstrates that real-time foundation monitoring is not only achievable, but that it has the potential to help operators and policymakers quantify the conservatism of their existing design codes.