Health, Industry and the Environment

Health, Industry and the EnvironmentAuthor(s): John LenihanSource: The Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 37, No. 9 (Sep., 1986), pp. 889-891Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals on behalf of the Operational Research SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2582806 .

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J. Opl Res. Soc. Vol. 37, No. 9, pp. 889-891, 1986 0160-5682/86 $3.00 + 0.00 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved Copyright I) 1986 Operational Research Society Ltd

Health, Industry and the Environment JOHN LENIHAN

Department of Nursing Studies, University of Glasgow

The management of risk in industrial activity is, in principle, a rational process, conducted with the aim of securing desirable social benefit at acceptable social cost. The benefits of technology, in terms of increased productivity, reduced morbidity and quicker communications, can readily be quantified, but the appraisal of the associated hazards is made difficult by the discrepancy between observed (or calculated) risk and perceived risk.

Key words: environmental studies

INTRODUCTION

In considering the impact of industrial activity on environmental quality and on health, it is appropriate to remember that the environment was not really taken seriously until the beginning of the 19th century. Before then there was, of course, the concept of an environment resembling the Garden of Eden-clean, peaceful and fertile-but this was more often a literary device than an objective of practical politics. When Samuel Johnson visited the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in 1773, he was not at all impressed by the "wilderness of desolation" and the "uncultivated ruggedness"; to him, and to most of his contemporaries, nature was bearable only when it had been improved by man.

Soon after that, two new views of the environment were offered. The Lakeland poets and others asserted the beauty of the natural environment, which they found as the inspiration of noble thoughts and as a system to be admired and cherished. A different view was also prevalent. In 1828, the Institution of Civil Engineers asked Thomas Tredgold to give them a definition of their specialty, to be quoted in their application for a Royal Charter. Civil engineering, said Tredgold, is the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man.

Today we are conscious of other models of the environment-as an ecosystem endangered by thoughtless or selfish human activity, and as a symposium of hazards. It might seem strange that there is so much anxiety about the environment at a time when pollution is less than at any time during the past century and when the public health has never been better. But public expectations have greatly increased, as regards both health and environmental amenity. At the same time, tensions have been created by:

the growth of large industrial companies and complexes; the increasing power of the state; the addition to the environment of substances which do not occur naturally and are therefore not subject to natural processes of disposal or recycling; distrust of experts.

These tensions are apparent in the current debates about acid rain, nuclear power, safety of medicines and chemical waste disposal. The problem which they pose is easy to identify but difficult to deal with. It is a problem that occurs in many contexts: how to use technology in a way that optimizes the conflicting requirements (or expectations) of desirable social benefit and acceptable social cost. This will be recognized as a problem in operational research.

CALCULATED VS PERCEIVED RISK

In tackling this problem, it is often possible to quantify the benefits of technology-for example, increased productivity, reduced morbidity or quicker communications-and to put a monetary value on such improvements. But the appraisal of the associated hazards is more difficult. The main

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reason for this difficulty is the discrepancy between observed (or calculated) risk and perceived risk, and the fact that often benefits affect one set of individuals whilst hazards affect another set. Three related considerations are as follows:

(1) There is a common tendency to overestimate small risks and underestimate large risks.' (2) For many hazards there is a socially acceptable level of risk, which is very persistent.

Evidence of this phenomenon is seen in the remarkable constancy, over long periods of time, of the annual number of midair collisions,2 other aircraft accidents,3 collisions at sea,4'5 deaths by accidental electrocution and deaths or suicides from coal gas poisoning.6 For some hazards, such as alcohol and tobacco, the threshold for public concern is very high, but for others (such as environmental radiation from nuclear power) it is very low.

(3) Objections to industrial activities which are perceived as dangerous are usually prompt, articulate and well reported by the media; but rational appraisal of these objections is often slow, unspectacular and of little interest to the media, to whom (it often seems) good news is no news.

For every industrial activity, there is an optimum expenditure of effort on hazard control and environmental protection. If we do nothing in these matters, the financial cost of control will be nil, but the social cost of ignoring the hazards may be enormous. If we aim for zero hazard to health or environment, the cost of control will be enormous, but the social cost of the remaining hazard will be very small. Somewhere between these extremes, the sum of the two costs is at a minimum. The crux of the question that we are considering is that this calculated, or observed, optimum is seldom the same as the perceived optimum desired by the public or by the pressure groups which seek to influence public opinion.

It is, of course, irrational, when considering radiation or environmental pollutants, to advocate zero as the only safe level. The current anxiety over dioxins provides an example of this approach. Dioxins are produced in the combustion of organic material in the presence of trace quantities of chlorine. They are found, at low levels, in coal and wood ash, car exhaust pipes, cigarette ash, milk, human and animal fat, and in the environment generally. Because they are everywhere, it is not possible to know whether they do any harm at the levels prevailing in the environment. In recent years, much excitement has been generated in Scotland by occasional reports that dioxins have been found (at background levels) in samples of milk. There would be more cause for interest had someone produced a sample of milk which did not contain dioxins.

REDUCING THE DISCREPANCY

How might public perception be brought closer to reality? Some lines of thought and action will be obvious from what I have already said; I shall mention a few more.

(1) There is need for freer flow of information, and for greater effort in education, on environmental issues. One local authority in Scotland is at present assembling a file of information on every industrial activity subject to statutory control in regard to emission, waste disposal and other potentially objectionable processes. These files will be open to the public-an admirable initiative, which ought to be widely emulated.

(2) The widespread misunderstanding of the impact of industrial activity on health and on the quality of the environment reflects the prevailing inability or unwillingness of scientists and technologists to talk to the rest of the world. In this situation, the task of informing (or misinforming) the public is too often left to the more excitable elements among the media and the pressure groups.4It is, of course, easier and more satisfying to talk to colleagues or other specialists than to a wider audience-partly because, in most professions, talking to the public is regarded as a rather vulgar activity. But a well-informed public would provide the best defence against error or folly in managing the environment.

(3) It must, however, be appreciated that there are other reasons for the discrepancy between the strategies based on observation (or calculation) and on perception. It is very difficult to express environmental quality in numerical terms. One man's scenery is another's wilderness. In balancing the conflicting claims of industrial development against environmental amenity,

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we all inevitably make value judgments-and we do not all have the same scale of values. There is a need to review the legislative and administrative provisions related to the impact of industrial activity on health and the environment. Scottish local authorities have the obligation, imposed by the Public Heaith (Scotland) Act of 1897, to detect and deal with instances of nuisance. But to achieve effective action, they have to prove injury or damage to health. On this point, legislation has not advanced in step with changing public expectations in regard to health and environmental quality. Consequently, they are often unable to respond as they would wish-and as their constituents would wish-to situations created by industrial activity. Here we see another problem familiar in operational research-failure to correlate authority with responsibility.

The theme of this meeting embraces many large and difficult problems. In thinking about them, we should remember the fate of the dinosaurs, which ruled the earth for a very long time, and finally disappeared because they could no longer adapt to a changing environment. We are in the unique position of having the ability to make large-scale changes in the environment; if we cannot learn how to cope with the associated hazards, we shall hasten the time when we go the way of the dinosaurs.

REFERENCES

1. S. LICHTENSTEIN, P. SLOvIc, B. FISCHHOFF, M. LAYMAN and B. COMBS (1978) Judged frequency of lethal events. J. exp. Psychol. Hum. Learn. memory 4, 551-578.

2. S. RATCLIFFE (1985) Devices for the avoidance of collision in the air. Electron. Power 31, 515-518. 3. A. STRATTON (1974) Safety and air navigation. J. Navig. 27, 407-449. 4. A. N. COCKCROFT (1976) Statistics of collisions at sea. J. Navig. 29, 215-231. 5. A. N. COCKCROFT (1978) Statistics of ship collisions. J. Navig. 31, 213-218. 6. H. PEQUIGNOT and M. BERTIN (1980) Trends in risks associated with gas. Int. atom. Energy Ag. Bull. 22, No. 5/6, 92-101.

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Health, Industry and the Environment