Computation and Measurement of Risk - Mathematics and Statistics for the Environment - page 179

8 Computation and

Measurement of Risk

… the currents swirled about me; all your waves and breakers swept over me.

—Jonah 2:3

8.1 INTRODUCTION *
Environmental practitioners are concerned with a broad range of environmental and public health
issues related to everyday activities and natural occurrences that lead to environmental degradation,
such as the creation of wastes, emissions, and resource depletion. By another name, these are risks .
Environmental risk managers protect human health and the environment by

• Controlling and preventing air pollution emissions
• Supporting Homeland Security programs by investigating ways to decontaminate buildings
• Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through new technologies
• Identifying and reducing water quality and availability issues
• Protecting groundwater
• Providing technical support on below-ground pollution and ecosystem restoration
• Determining which oil spill dispersants are best
• Helping communities achieve growth goals, improving residents' quality of life, and
enhancing financial and environmental sustainability
• Working on soil and sediment contamination issues
• Cleaning up waterways to make them usable for drinking, swimming, and ishing
• Providing choices for managing wastes
• Helping communities with their land use decisions
• Identifying consequences of technology changes and presenting sustainable alternatives
• Analyzing product processes or services and their adverse impacts and recommending
greener choices
• Demonstrating practices that meet the needs of the present without compromising the abil-
ity of future generations to meet theirs
• Developing approaches and tools to monitor, treat, protect, and restore impaired waterways
• Improving drinking water and wastewater systems

Environmental practitioners accomplish these tasks by working with outside organizations to
design, develop, and evaluate technologies and methods; by providing assistance to develop and
apply environmental technologies; and by incorporating cost-effective techniques that lead to suc-
cessful pollution prevention and control strategies.

* Material presented in this chapter is adapted from Spellman, F.R. and Stoudt, M.L., The Handbook of Environmental
Health , Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD, 2013; CDC, Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health , Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, 2012.

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