Worker Risks: The Unacknowledged Transfer of Risk

Abstract

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1065/espr2001.11.099.1.1 - - -
Thousands of individual sites across the United States
were chemically and radioactively contaminated as a result of
processing and disposal activities that began more than 50 years
ago, before we understood the potential for environmental damage
and human health risk from extant waste management practices.
Hundreds of these sites were used for research and production
in support of the national defense mission, including
facilities managed by and for the U.S. Department of Energy.
An extensive federal cleanup program is underway to develop
appropriate environmental management responses for these facilities,
following the general framework developed by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for Superfund sites.
Risks estimated for the public, workers, and ecological resources
as part of this EPA framework are intended to serve as input to
the overall cleanup plans. Methods and data exist to predict
risks for workers involved in common cleanup activities, such
as excavation and transportation of wastes for disposal. While
worker risks have not often been the driving factor in determining
whether active cleanup measures are taken, in certain cases,
results of the worker risk analyses have been used to guide the
response actions and develop activity-specific protection plans.
This paper identifies approaches used to estimate worker risks
and illustrates ways to present the results in a manner that can
effectively inform cleanup decisions. - - -
Abbreviations: ALARA: as low as reasonably achievable; DOE:
U.S. Department of Energy; EM: Environmental Management;
EPA: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; ISM: integrated
safety management