Communicating Risks to the Public: International Perspectives (Risk, Governance and Society Book 4)

Risk communication: the evolution of attempts Risk communication is at once a very new and a very old field of interest. Risk analysis, as Krimsky and Plough (1988:2) point out, dates back at least to the Babylonians in 3200 BC. Cultures have traditionally utilized a host of mecha­ nisms for anticipating, responding to, and communicating about hazards - as in food avoidance, taboos, stigma of persons and places, myths, migration, etc. Throughout history, trade between places has necessitated labelling of containers to indicate their contents. Seals at sites of the ninth century BC Harappan civilization of South Asia record the owner and/or contents of the containers (Hadden, 1986:3). The Pure Food and Drug Act, the first labelling law with national scope in the United States, was passed in 1906. Common law covering the workplace in a number of countries has traditionally required that employers notify workers about significant dangers that they encounter on the job, an obligation formally extended to chronic hazards in the OSHA's Hazard Communication regulation of 1983 in the United States. In this sense, risk communication is probably the oldest way of risk manage­ ment. However, it is only until recently that risk communication has attracted the attention of regulators as an explicit alternative to the by now more common and formal approaches of standard setting, insuring etc. (Baram, 1982). Front Matter....Pages I-VI Introduction....Pages 1-12 Risk communication in Europe: Ways of implementing art. 8 of the post-Seveso directive....Pages 15-33 Active and passive provision of risk information in the Netherlands....Pages 35-54 Developing communications about risks of major industrial accidents in the Netherlands....Pages 55-66 Rights and duties concerning the availability of environmental risk information to the public....Pages 67-78 Risk comparisons and risk communication: Issues and problems in comparing health and environmental risks....Pages 79-124 Front Matter....Pages 125-125 Contaminated soil: public reactions, policy decisions, and risk communication....Pages 127-144 Prior knowledge and risk communication: The case of nuclear radiation and X-rays....Pages 145-155 The role of the media in risk communication....Pages 157-173 Credibility and trust in risk communication....Pages 175-217 How people might process medical information: A ‘mental model’ perspective on the use of package inserts....Pages 219-236 Communicating about pesticides in drinking water....Pages 237-262 The time dimension in perception and communication of risk....Pages 263-285 Risk communication and the social amplification of risk....Pages 287-324 Front Matter....Pages 325-325 Hazard images, evaluations and political action: The case of toxic waste incineration....Pages 327-343 The danger culture of industrial society....Pages 345-365 Risk communication in emergencies....Pages 367-392 Risk communication: The need for a broader perspective....Pages 393-412 Small group studies of regulatory decision making for power-frequency electric and magnetic fields....Pages 413-455 Strategies of risk communication: Observations from two participatory experiments....Pages 457-481 Back Matter....Pages 482-482