Risk Analysis, Vol. 31, No. 10, 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1539-6924.2011.01711.x

From the Editors

We begin with a letter to the editor by DuncanMara commenting on Bernard Goldstein’s perspec-tive in the last issue “If it Ain’t Broke . . . ”.(1) Mararaises the issue of how much money should be spentto manage risks, a topic and debate that has a longhistory in this journal,(2) and is the core of our vir-tual issue about Professor Lester Lave.(3) Mara’s let-ter sets a tone for what is an issue that is largely aboutthe role of uncertainty in decision making.

The first article is by Terje Aven, supported bythe Research Council of Norway, in which he ad-dresses the much-debated precautionary principle.Aven asserts that evoking the principle requires amuch clearer definition of uncertainty, and he sug-gests focusing the application around several keycomponents of the risk assessment process, mostnotably the difficulty of predicting consequences.Commentaries by Warner North, Tony Cox, andCharles Vlek follow, along with a response fromAven.

Two articles in this issue present dose-responsemodels for potential biological agents. Both studieswere funded by the U.S. Department of HomelandSecurity. Sushil B. Tamrakar and Charles Haas de-veloped a dose-response model for Rickettsia rick-ettsii, which causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever.Normally, the disease is transmitted through tickbites, but other pathways are possible, includingsome cases of aerosol transmission. The authorsfound that the beta-poisson model provided the bestfit to the dose-response data of aerosol-exposed rhe-sus monkeys, and intradermally inoculated humans(morbidity as end point of response).

In the second article, Sondra Teske et al. de-velop several dose-response models for animals andhumans for types of Brucellosis, which is one of themost common zoonotic diseases worldwide and forwhich there is no human vaccine. Disease trans-mission frequently occurs through the handling ofdomestic livestock, as well as ingestion of unpasteur-ized milk and cheese, but also can be aerosolized.

The authors found that a beta-poisson model wasagain the best fit to pooled data and management ofuncertainty.

Kan Shao and Mitchell Small consider anotherinteresting uncertainty-related question: What is thevalue of additional dose studies prior to calculatingdose-response models? They conclude that a secondanalysis, especially a high dose study, reduced uncer-tainty.

V. J. Roelofs and M. C. Kennedy examine thethorny issue of estimating tails of risk distributions.The authors introduce a method that combines ex-treme value theory with Bayesian tools, and theydemonstrate that this approach increases the effi-ciency of the modeling process.

Supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Con-trol and Prevention, Rachael Jones and Elodie Adidause both uncertainty analysis and Monte Carlo sim-ulations to try to isolate the predominate exposureroute for spreading influenza. The authors concludethat virus concentration in expiratory particles of dif-ferent sizes, frequency of expiratory events, and in-fectivity at different locations in the respiratory tractare the key components for additional work aimed atreducing uncertainty.

Funded by the Crystalline Silica Panel of theAmerican Chemistry Council, Anthony Cox exploresmechanisms that increase the probability of crys-talline silica causing lung cancer. The author de-scribes an inflammatory process of action with pos-itive feedback loops that lead to fibrosis and increaselung cancer risk, and finds that there is a tipping pointbeyond which the disease is much more likely tooccur.

Pieter van Broekhuizen and Lucas Reijnders ar-ticulate a pubic policy position assumed by union-affiliated groups in Europe that they characterizeas part of the precautionary approach to the use ofnanomaterials. The position is that in the face of sub-stantial uncertainty, there should be required report-ing of the type and content of nanoparticles applied

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in products, a register of workers possibly exposed tonanoparticles, and other steps to monitor exposureand outcomes.

During the last few years we have begun topublish more articles that explore attacker and de-fender strategies for homeland security applications.Gregory Levitin and Kjell Hausken examine theuse of resources by attackers and defenders, posingand testing different strategies with hypotheticalexamples.

Finally, this issue contains two articles about riskperception and communication studies that empha-size the need to better understand uncertain pub-lic responses to events and communications. TeunTerpstra examined influences on public flood pre-paredness intentions in the Netherlands. The au-thor found that both negative emotions and cogni-tive processes contributed, and that actual events aswell as near misses and threats also influence percep-tion. This article reinforces the contribution of theaffect heuristic and trust in public risk beliefs andactions.

How can people be persuaded to participate inprograms that will reduce their exposures to the ef-fects of hurricane winds? Funded by the NationalOceanic and Atmospheric Administration and theNational Science Foundation, Yue Ge, Walter GillisPeacock, and Michael Lindell explored answers tothis question in hurricane-prone Florida. They con-clude that participation increases when people are re-peatedly reminded about hurricane consequences.

Michael Greenberg and Karen Lowrie

REFERENCES

1. Goldstein BD. Risk assessment of environmental chemicals: Ifit ain’t broke. Risk Analysis, 2011; 31(9):1356–1362.

2. Tengs T, Adams M, Pliskin J, Safran D, Siegel J, WeinsteinM, Graham J. Five-hundred life-saving interventions and theircost-effectiveness. Risk Analysis, 1995; 15(3):369–390.

3. Greenberg M (ed). Special Issue: Lester Lave: Reflectionsand Papers Published. Available at Wiley Online Library:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291539–6924/homepage/special issue lester lave.htm.