Procedural and substantive fairness in risk decisions: comparative risk assessment procedures.(Symposium on Environmental Health Policy)

The recent proliferation of state & local comparative risk projects for informing the selection of environmental policy priorities offers an appropriate setting to explore the issue of procedural fairness in risk-based decision making. Evaluated here is the process by which one of the initial state comparative risk projects, WA's "Environment 2010," attempted to include a broader range of participants in identifying, assessing, & generating preferred management strategies for a wide range of environmental hazards. The case study suggests that comparative risk projects can be fairer procedurally, but that significant barriers remain. Noting that greater procedural fairness does not necessarily produce greater substantive fairness, it is concluded that more attention needs to be directed at the process by which comparative risk projects translate their consensus on risk priorities into subsequent actions. 28 References. Adapted from the source document.