Empowering Communities to Use Risk Assessment to Evaluate Local Environments
Presented by: Dave Lynch and Hank Topper, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Deirdre Murphy, Office of Air and Radiation, and Lee Hofmann, Office of Emergency and Remedial Response, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Greg Macek; and Peter Murchie

This workshop will explain how to build community capacity to participate in a successful local-scale risk assessment. Federal agencies can support community involvement by providing technical assistance, training, and strategic planning, and by facilitating the development of partnerships (between community members, industry, small business, and local groups).

The audience will participate in a discussion of key science concepts needed by communities to participate in a risk assessment (i.e., hazard, exposure, risk, environmental modeling, uncertainty, screening) and how to communicate them. Techniques for forming a community partnership will be presented, including posing and answering questions like: Who in the community will participate? How can you get them to participate? What essential roles will the community participants play? Experiences from the audience, OPPT’s Community Assistance Technical Team, Superfund, and OAR’s Urban Toxics Program will be used to illustrate and provide lessons learned.

No additional materials are available for this session