Note: This is the second guest post by Integral on this subject, it is also worth reviewing their prior post from February on this topic.
In addition to the updated national recommended water quality criteria discussed by Doug on May 20, EPA has recently released another document with implications for selection of an appropriate
I watched Commander Chis Hadfield’s TED talk this weekend. He is an astronaut that gave a very compelling talk on perception of risk and how humans respond to that risk, and how we can condition ourselves to change that response. If you haven’t seen it, it is absolutely worth 18 minutes of your life. He talks about going blind during a shuttle mission, and relates that experience to how humans assess risk generally and how we can condition ourselves to responding to situations we perceive as dangerous or scary. Take the time to watch, or read my quick summary below (but if you can, watch his talk—it really is fantastic) and come back for my thoughts on how this relates to communication of risk, the resulting public understanding of that risk, and how that understanding drives policy decisions in environmental regulation:
I started thinking about risk assessment and communication during his discussion of common fears using the example of the fear of spiders. This resonated with me because I share that fear with the majority of people I know, and particularly don’t like walking through spider webs. However, understanding context is important in understanding whether a fear is rational. Commander Hadfield points out that there are approximately 50,000 species of spiders in the world, and only two dozen or so that are truly venomous. In Canada, where the talk was being given, there are 729 species of spiders and only one (the black widow) that is mildly venomous. Black widows won’t kill you; at most they’ll cause discomfort.
Commander Hadfield’s point with the spider web example is that you can change your response to walking through spider webs by understanding these statistics: if you know that black widows are the only venomous spider in your area, and know that black widows don’t build the type of web you walk through, and also know that black widows won’t kill you, then you can condition yourself to not get the heeby jeebies when you walk through a web. It might take you 100 trips through spider webs, but you can do it.
His bigger point is that astronauts take advantage of the ability of humans to condition themselves when training for the unexpected in space. As a result, he didn’t freak out or panic when he found himself temporarily blinded in a spacesuit during a spacewalk. Panic would have made the situation much worse, so conditioning yourself to not panic is key to survival in such situations. This concept was something I have personal experience with, as we took advantage of the ability to condition ourselves to not panic back when I still did deep scuba dives (before I had kids).
What does this have to do with science, law, policy, and the environment?Continue Reading What an Astronaut Can Teach Us about Risk Communication: Chris Hadfield’s TED Talk and Lessons for Assessing Environmental Risk
Last week, Dan Jaffe’s atmospheric research group at the University of Washington released the results of a study of particulate emissions associated with rail traffic here in Seattle and along the Columbia River. That study was motivated by the controversy over coal exports, and was funded by contributions from the Sierra Club and through crowdfunding. We have been watching how this study has been received by the public and used by both sides of the coal export debate, and thought it would be useful to provide some context for Dr. Jaffe’s research, especially because this research is a good example of how science, policy, and law interact.
The paper is fairly readable even by someone who lacks a scientific background and is worth the read. To summarize, Dr. Jaffe and his group sampled particulate matter at two locations in Washington, a porch of a house located about 25 meters from train tracks in the Blue Ridge neighborhood in Seattle, and a location along the Columbia River. The Blue Ridge site is the subject of the most analysis. What the researchers observed there was a spike in fine particles as trains passed by. For passenger and freight trains, that spike occurred when the beginning of the train passed the site, and was attributed to diesel emissions from the locomotive. Coal trains had two spikes, one associated with the locomotive and a second associated with larger particles attributed to the coal contained in open-topped cars.
The part of the paper that is receiving the most media coverage is a back-of-the-envelope calculation in the final paragraphs where the authors conclude that a 50% increase in train traffic “would bring the PM2.5 concentrations at [the Blue Ridge] site up to about 14 ug/m3, which is higher than the new U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) of 12 ug/m3 (annual average).” Media and bloggers are using this conclusion to proclaim that coal trains are “degrading” air quality, such as this article in The Olympian, and Cliff Mass’s blog post from March 3rd.
This theme emerging in media in reaction to Dr. Jaffe’s research is what we wanted to explore in more detail.Continue Reading Particulate Emissions from Trains in Washington: A Cause for Concern?
Note from Doug Steding:
This post came about when Randi Wexler from Integral Consulting Inc. sent me an email saying they were working on a comment to one of my previous fish consumption posts. Integral has been tracking this issue closely for a number of years, and I was excited to be able to offer