Risk Analysis, Vol. 29, No. 5, 2009 DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2009.01231.x

From the Editors

Food-Bourne Risks and Hurricane Katrina

This issue includes a new analysis of the lossof human life associated with Hurricane Katrinaand continues a recent trend in the journal towardfood and security-related risks. Sebastiaan Jonkmanet al. examine the loss of life from Hurricane Katrinain Louisiana in August 2005. Over 1100 deaths oc-curred, a rate of slightly above one percent of thoseexposed, which is about the norm for this type ofevent. The authors find that 60 percent of the victimswere elderly, and disproportionally were African-Americans living adjacent to deep water bodies.Clear policy implications follow from the analysis.

Fish and food advisories are not uncommonin response to food contamination concerns. Butdo they change behavior? Funded by the USEPA,Adam D. DeWeese et al. study the impact of dis-tributing culturally sensitive risk communicationsabout methyl mercury contamination of Ogaa (wall-eye) to Anishinaabe Tribal Members in the GreatLakes Region of the United States. The authors sug-gest that the advisories work, that is, they reportgreater preference for younger fish, and no reductionin tribal harvest of Ogaa. In other words, the fishingpopulation appears to be more selective, which is thedesirable behavior.

Timothy Julian et al. note that young children aresusceptible to exposure to viruses and other micro-bial agents by hand-to-mouth contact after contactwith fomites, with can include any surface that retainsmicrobial agents including toys, pillows, and manyothers. The authors develop a risk assessment modelaround hand-fomites contacts typical of a child undersix years of age. Funded by the USEPA, the modelestimates the extent of exposure. However it alsoclearly demonstrates the need for additional data toproduce more precise estimates.

Roxanne Lewis and Michael Tyshenko examinethe impact of media on public perception of mad cowdisease in North America and Europe. Canadian andUnited States’ populations demonstrated much lessconcern about news of domestic mad cow diseasethan the amplified distress in the United Kingdom,

Germany, and Japan. Using the social amplificationof risk framework, the authors find that psychosocialimpacts resulting from other major events such as se-vere acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), West Nilevirus (WNV), and the U.S.–Iraq war made the lessthreatening risks of mad cow disease a lower prior-ity, reducing its concern as a risk issue.

Other papers in this May issue examine stan-dard journal topics, including radioactive waste dis-posal, storage of a relatively novel hazard, publicperception of climate change and terrorism. AlecMorton et al. describe an evaluation of the UnitedKingdom’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Man-agement (CoRWM). The Committee was asked toreinvigorate a stalled policy process and to identifypolices that would protect the public and the envi-ronment, and engender public confidence. After con-sulting widely with the public and stakeholders, anddrawing on advice from scientists and other experts,CoRWM arrived at a set of recommendations thatthe authors of the paper characterize as “well re-ceived.” The authors offer lessons learned that areconsistent with the experience of others, for exam-ple, that it is possible to assist a diverse group towork toward common goals. The outcome reportedin this paper, however, in our experience is rare andrequires a nuanced awareness of the social dynamicsof group decision-making processes, patience, a will-ingness to negotiate and an issue that all the partiesagree needs a solution.

Homeland security papers have become preva-lent in the journal and likelihood of success of at-tacks has been a major focal point of these papers.Lawrence M. Wein et al. develop an optimizationmodel to examine the factors that influence the like-lihood that a terrorist can successfully enter theUnited States across the U.S.-Mexico border. Themodel includes a complex set of variables, such asthe number of crossers and border patrol agents,amount of surveillance technology, a queuing modelthat determines the probability that a captured alienwill be detained and removed, and an equilibrium

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616 Editorial

model for illegal wages, which balances the supplyand demand for work and incorporates the impactof worksite enforcement. The authors say that deten-tion beds are the current system bottleneck and thatsurveillance technology is more cost-effective thanborder patrol agents, which in turn, are more effec-tive than worksite inspectors. The authors cautionthe reader not to take the estimates at face value be-cause of the difficulty of predicting human behaviorfrom existing data.

Novel risks typically are more distressing to thepublic than are familiar ones. Cees Midden andNicole Huijts examine the interplay between trustand attitudes in the context of hypothetical CO2 stor-age in the Netherlands. Examining a small sample,they find that trust is much more important when therisk is evaluated as important to the respondent andwhen the risk, for example, CO2 storage is relativelynovel. When the respondent judges the risk to be per-sonally less important because of physical or psycho-logical distance, then other factors such as perceivedbenefits are more relevant.

Many journals, including Risk Analysis, havereported on efforts to better understand climatechange and public perception of communicationsabout it. Using data from several surveys, ArielMalka et al. observe that knowledge is evaluateddifferently by sub-populations. For example, amongpeople who trust scientists’ information and whoare Democrats and Independents, more knowledge

was associated with greater concern about global cli-mate change. But in those skeptical about the sci-ence and among self-declared Republicans, moreknowledge was generally not associated with greaterconcern.

This issue contains three modeling papers thatadvance our ability to estimate risks. Rao et al. de-velop and test a stochastic model to assess uncer-tainty in risk assessment. Yin Huang and CharlesHaas propose and test an approach to estimatethe distribution of new animal infection cases overtime due to the initial exposure to a variety ofpathogens. Their time-dose-response models providestatistically acceptable fits to all tested pooled ani-mal survival dose-response data. Seyed MohammadSeyedhoseini, et al. focus on the transition from riskassessment to risk management, the stage at whichdecision makers must decide how to respond toa risk. Focusing on Iran’s petrochemical industry,they present a mathematical model to advise man-agers in the construction industry that operate on thevariables of time, quality and cost. The issue endswith Professor Michele Morone’s review of TamarLasky’s edited book Epidemiologic Principles andFood Safety, which was published by Oxford Univer-sity Press.

Michael GreenbergKaren Lowrie