Environmental Health Assessment - Essay Example

The purpose of this paper is to outline the concept of risk, the processes of risk assessment and risk management, two issues that may affect the city’s policy in relation to risk management, and the differences between risk assessment and risk management. Nuclear technology provides a means to produce electricity in a safe, less expensive and environmentally sustainable way. It also helps in developing a number of essential industrial and medical products and uses (Knief, 1991). On the other hand, the highly advanced, complex technology involving thousands of crucial mechanisms, lack of adequately trained personnel to operate the facility, and potentially dangerous raw materials and by-products of the processes, are capable of inflicting high levels of fatalities and illnesses among the population.

By means of epidemiology or the study of the causes, distribution and control of illnesses in populations, the “causal relations between environmental exposures and impaired states of health” are determined (Merson et al, 2004: 383). Accordingly governmental policies are regulated, for identifying levels of exposure to environmental health hazards, ensuring reduced risks to health and for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions. Risk perception by the public is greatest in relation to nuclear power, as indicated by research studies (Sjoberg, 2003; O’Riordan, 1982; Thomas et al, 1980).

Nuclear power was found to have nearly all the characteristics associated with high perceived risk: that hazards are involuntary, with delayed consequences, “unknown, uncontrollable, unfamiliar, potentially catastrophic, inequitable and certain to be fatal” (Ricci et al, 1981). Further, conflict situations regarding nuclear power are largely based on values and goals that may overwhelm issues of health and safety. In view of these risks, public opinion is