Hazards in the chemical industry

Zentner, Rene D.

doi:10.1021/cen-v057n045.p025

Cited by 11 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The controversial aspects of that choice can be seen by comparing the practices of different scientists. For some, the unit of choice is the annual death toll (e.g., Zentner, 1979); for others, death per person exposed or per hour of exposure (e.g., Starr, 1969;Wilson, 1979); for others, it is the loss of life expectancy (e.g., Cohen and Lee, 1979;Reissland and Harries, 1979); for still others, lost working days (e.g., Inhaber, 1979). Crouch and Wilson (1982) have shown how the choice of unit can affect the relative riskiness of technologies; for example, today's coal mines are much less risky than those of thirty years ago in terms of accidental deaths per ton of coal, but marginally riskier in terms of accidental deaths per employee.…”

Section: Dimensions Of Controversymentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining risk

1984

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Risk is the focal topic in the management of many activities and technologies. For that management to be successful, an explicit and accepted definition of the term "risk" is essential. Creation of that definition is a political act, expressing the definers' values regarding the relative importance of different possible adverse consequences for a particular decision. Those values, and with them the definition of risk, can change with changes in the decisionmaker, the technologies considered, or the decision problem. After a review of the sources of controversy in defining risk, a general framework is developed, showing how these value issues can be systematically addressed. As an example, the approach is applied to characterizing the risks of six competing energy technologies, the relative riskeness of which depends upon the particular definition used.

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Section: Dimensions Of Controversymentioning

confidence: 99%