Risk management in chemical safety: some general observations relating to the state of the art.
Risk management for chemical safety begins with judgement and produces arbitrary regulations. In between, technical risk assessment has value in clarifying the behaviour of particular chemical risk systems. Risk quantification can be useful in some cases and quite misleading in others. In no case can it alone be the decisive factor. In the public's perception, chemicals are feared most for potential insidious exposure in the general environment. Risk management then must deal with high system uncertainty and information heavily influenced by value judgements. The technical contribution to risk assessment is reduced, in real terms, as the decision-making scenario expands with its increasing exposure to system 'noise', interference and misinformation. Improved communication in the system requires the use of simplified language. The suitability of risk estimation methodologies must be assessed in terms of general comprehensibility in the management for chemical safety will remain, perhaps always, more of an art than a science, concerned with an interplay of information that can be 'rationalised' with other information that defies such rationalisation.
D003142:Communication; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D011041:Poisoning / Q000517:prevention & control*; D012306:Risk; D012449:Safety