Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 81 (2000) 229–233
Book reviews
Risk assessment in environmental management: a guide for managing chemical contamination pro-blems
D. Kofi Asante-Duah, John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, UK, 1998, 515 pp., US$ 175, ISBN 0-471-98147-8
The author states that this book aims “to provide a concise, yet comprehensive overview of the many facets/aspects relating to chemical risk assessments”. In particular, it deals with environmental contamina-tion problems and is concerned with the present con-cepts and techniques in risk assessment that may be applied to these problems.
Asante-Duah is a Californian environmental consul-tant, who is also a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts. Thus the concepts and techniques that he presents are those that are relevant in the US.
The book covers a very wide range of topics, albeit briefly and in an introductory manner. This is in ac-cord with the author’s statements that the book will introduce risk assessment to those who deal with en-vironmental toxicants and that he expects it to serve as a useful educational and training resource for both students and professional consultants. The book is or-ganised into seven parts — consisting of 20 chapters, together with a set of seven appendices. The chapters, and their division into parts, are:
General overview 1. Introduction
2. The nature of environmental contamination prob-lems
3. Characterization of environmental contamination problems
4. Legislative-regulatory control needs for the man-agement of environmental contamination prob-lems
Principles of risk assessment
5. Fundamentals of hazard, exposure and risk assess-ment
6. The risk assessment process
7. Basic concepts in risk assessment practice Principal elements of a risk assessment 8. Determination of contaminant fate and behaviour
in the environment
9. Hazard identification, data collection, and data evaluation
10. Design of conceptual models and exposure anal-ysis
11. The toxicology of environmental contaminants and hazard effects determination
12. Risk characterization and uncertainty analysis Risk assessment techniques and methods of approach
13. Human health risk assessment 14. Ecological risk assessments 15. Probabilistic risk assessments
Determination of acceptable risk-based limits for environmental chemicals
16. General protocols for establishing acceptable chemical concentrations and environmental qual-ity criteria
17. Development of risk-based remediation goals 18. Illustrative examples of risk assessment practice
The role of risk assessment in environmental management decisions
19. Design of risk management programs
20. Risk assessment applications to environmental management problems
Appendices
The book serves as a useful resource, especially to North Americans and to those who wish to be informed as to current US practice. There are, on av-erage, 50 or so references and further reading sugges-tions at the end of each chapter. Students and consul-tants will be pleased to have it in their libraries so that
230 Book reviews
they can look up the appendices that give acronyms, glossaries and toxicological information for selected chemicals. Environmental toxicology, like so much of science, serves up a constant diet of acronym soup. The three pages of Appendix A help make some of it digestible. But not all. The author starts to refer to hazardous waste management facilities as TSDFs on Page 7. The acronym is never explained. My best-guess is Toxic Safe Disposal Facilities.
During the time that I was Science Adviser to what was then the EPA in Canberra, I wrote (Beer and Ziolkowski, 1995) that
“the topic of risk can be likened to an onion. It is composed of many layers, each subsuming the underneath layers. It is fascinating, however, to find that it is a topic in which each single layer of the onion believes itself to be the whole onion.” I am concerned at the increasing tendency for en-vironmental toxicologists to appropriate the word risk assessment as a catch-phrase to describe their activities. Risk assessment is not synonymous with environmental toxicology. An environmental manager who fails to note the sub-title of this book and looks for guidance on risk assessment in areas outside of chemical contamination will be disappointed. The use of risk assessment to examine climate change, natural hazards, forest policy, endangered species, or urban and rural development, to name just a few, lie outside the author’s scope.
The topic of chemical contamination is especially relevant in the US because, as mentioned on Page 53, the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Com-pensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) set up a Su-perfund. The Superfund exists to cover the liability of owners and operators for the cost of removal or remedial action and damages following the release or threat of release of hazardous waste. This legisla-tion proved lucrative for the legal fraternity because many of those potentially liable for payments under the act opted for litigation rather than payment. This was also a boon for consultants who could then of-fer their expertise to the lawyers, and this book would be useful for students who fancy themselves in this regard.
The USEPA is a leader in the development of risk assessment as a tool with which to quantify envi-ronmental decision-making. As a result the author cursorily passes over the international dimension of
managing chemicals in the environment. As Kellow (1999) points out, the national dimension and the international dimension on this issue lead to diamet-rically opposed management policies.
Given that this review is being written for Agri-culture, Ecosystems and Environment, I looked up each of these words in the index. There was a whole page of index entries for the word ‘environmental’, which ranged from environmental assessment to envi-ronmental restoration programs. Neither ‘agriculture’ nor ‘ecosystem’ rates a mention. There are, however, numerous entries under ‘ecological’. The main thrust of the book is human health risk assessment, so that it is pleasing to find about 20 pages devoted to eco-logical risk assessment, albeit as posed by chemical contamination.
References
Beer, T., Ziolkowski, F., 1995. Risk Assessment: An Australian Perspective, Report 102, Supervising Scientist, Canberra, Australia, 125 pp. (available at http://www.environment.gov.au/ ssg/pubs/risk/risk toc.html).
Kellow, A., 1999. International Toxic Risk Management, Cam-bridge University Press, CamCam-bridge, UK, 222 pp.
Dr. T. Beer∗
(Co-ordinator) CSIRO Environmental Risk Network Atmospheric Research, Private Bag 1 Aspendale, Vic. 3195, Australia
Tel.:+61-3-9239-4400; fax:+61-3-9239-4444. E-mail address:Tom.Beer@dar.csiro.au (T. Beer).
Accepted 22 March 2000 PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 8 8 0 9 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 1 5 3 - 5
Checklist for Sustainable Landscape Management J.D. van Mansvelt and M.J. van der Lubbe, Elsevier Science Inc., 1999, 202 pp., hard cover, US$ 106.50
