Environmental Risk Communication through Qualitative Risk Assessment

Abstract

Environmental analysts are often hampered in communicating the risks of environmental contaminants due to the myriad of regulatory requirements that are applicable. The use of a qualitative, risk-based control banding strategy for assessment and control of potential environmental contaminants provides a standardized approach to improve risk communication. Presented is a model that provides an effective means for determining standardized responses and controls for common environmental issues based on the level of risk. The model is designed for integration within an occupational health and safety management system to provide a multidisciplinary environmental and occupational risk management approach. This environmental model, which utilizes multidisciplinary control banding strategies for delineating risk, complements the existing Risk Level Based Management System, a proven method in a highly regulated facility for occupational health and safety. A simplified environmental risk matrix is presented that is stratified over four risk levels. Examples of qualitative environmental control banding strategies are presented as they apply to United States regulations for construction, research activities, facility maintenance, and spill remediation that affect air, water, soil, and waste disposal. This approach offers a standardized risk communication language for multidisciplinary issues that will improve communications within and between environmental health and safety professionals, workers, and management.

Barrier Banding: A Concept for Safety Solutions Utilizing Control Banding Principles

“…This qualitative risk assessment tool has now been quantitatively validated and serves as a gold standard for preventing work-related exposure to nanomaterials. , Reaching across the OSHH disciplines, this matrix is also the basis for BB ,, and a burgeoning multidisciplinary approach for an occupational risk management construction toolbox. ,, This RL matrix has also been determined to be best suited for the unique needs of a health and safety management system with a multidisciplinary OSHH workforce . It provides versatility as a tool of risk communication in addressing complex issues like performing qualitative environmental risk assessment, and assessing pharmaceutical and nanomaterial exposures down to more common, high-repetition, multidisciplinary approaches like in the construction industry. ,, The RL matrix also calibrates OSHH professional risk perceptions when working as a multidisciplinary team, reduces among-discipline variability, or, statistically put, reduces the Type II error of producing a false positive, when the assumption is that disciplines will respond the same, but in reality do not …”

“…7 It provides versatility as a tool of risk communication in addressing complex issues like performing qualitative environmental risk assessment, and assessing pharmaceutical and nanomaterial exposures down to more common, high-repetition, multidisciplinary approaches like in the construction industry. 35,42,48 The RL matrix also calibrates OSHH professional risk perceptions when working as a multidisciplinary team, reduces among-discipline variability, or, statistically put, reduces the Type II error of producing a false positive, when the assumption is that disciplines will respond the same, but in reality do not. 7 ■ BANDING OF BARRIERS Barriers are hardware control measures and human interventions, which will block or influence the development of a scenario.…”

Qualitative Approach to Environmental Risk Assessment in Transport

“…However, these methods require a large amount of specific data, which is very time consuming to collect [ 4 ]. For this reason, it is convenient to use at first some of the appropriate qualitative methods for the preliminary risk analysis [ 5 , 6 ]. These methods are time-saving but, on the contrary, also quite general.…”