The Rise and Fall of Comparative Risk Assessment

Abstract

sent what the agency knows and what it does effectively. There are different ways of formalizing its generic object, the kinds of knowledge it uses to make its decisions, and how it manages to forge decisions on highly disputed issues. These designs vary according to the political configuration in which the agency is caught— the networks of supporters or adversaries that form around environmental issues and its action on these uncertain issues, and the inevitable controversies that ensue. The ambition to systematically measure the risks, costs, and benefits associated with decision projects lasted for most of the 1980s, despite some doubts as to the importance that William Ruckelshaus’s successor, Lee Thomas, would grant to this technology, particularly after the departure of Alvin Alm, the deputy administrator who championed costbenefit analysis and instilled the motivation in the agency to use that kind of information. At the end of the 1980s, in a new configuration marked by renewed controversies over the EPA’s priorities— stemming from its treatment of the discovery of supposed widespread risks from exposure to the gas radon and the pesticide alar, pressures on its budget in an aggressive Republican administration, and a changing national environmental agenda— the commensurative design assumed greater importance. During the term of Thomas (1985– 1989), and even more so during the stint of Bill Reilly (1989– 1993), efforts were made to create new knowledge representations and technologies to link risk assessors of various program or regional offices, so as to extinguish the uncertainty caused by these offices’ nebulous and variegated ways of deciding which risk matters, and closing subsequent controversies concerning the EPA’s inability to focus on the right subject. This mainly 8 The Rise and Fall of Comparative Risk Assessment