Risk Assessment: Tools, Techniques, and Their Applications

2.1 Knowledge Level

In this day and age, we are sensitive to the use, misuse, and abuse of chemicals. Situation-stained landscapes such as Love Canal and Bhopal are at the near edge of our memories and, if not, there is always a chemical release or Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) violation or factory fire spewing noxious fumes somewhere on the news. With these constant reminders, we realize that, while chemicals are necessary, they are also dangerous. And since there has not been a recent, prominent example of a propane truck leveling a city, it is just assumed to be not as dangerous. After all, it is just propane, right?

To lay this issue solely at the feet of education is oversimplifying it. First, this approach assumes that a well-informed public will perceive the risks as the experts do and that a low probability of an incident's occurrence is enough to quantify the risk as insignificant. This approach, while mathematically valid, does not consider the emotional component the general public includes when they weigh in. Teach them about a hazardous process, derive its accidents and initiators, describe potential mitigations, and a definite chance exists that you will just end up with hyperaware protestors. If for no other reason than they now can quantify the results, regardless of the fact that that particular set of results is considered highly unlikely in the view of engineers and scientists. That is the power of emotion.

Then there is the cognoscente—those ...