Risk Assignment: History & Framework
Complete Part A and Part B of this assignment.
Part A: Historical Development of Risk Assignment Summary
Resource: Table 1.1 (Ch. 1) in Human and Ecological Risk Assignment
TABLE 1.1 An Historical Timeline of Events Having Some Significance on the Evolution of the Environmental Movement.
Ancient Civilization
A.D. 80 The Roman Senate passes a law to protect water stored during dry periods so it can be released for street and sewer cleaning. Aqueducts have to be built because local springs and pools have become polluted.
Middle Ages and the Enlightenment (1300-1700)
1306 Edward I forbids coal burning when English Parliament is in session.
1640 Izaak Walton writes The Compleat Angler.
1661 John Evelyn writes "Fumifugium, or the Inconvenience of the Aer and Smoake of London Dissipated" to propose remedies for London's air pollution problem.
1681 William Penn requires Pennsylvania settlers to preserve 1 acre of trees for every 5 acres cleared.
Industrial Revolution (1700-1900)
1739 Benjamin Franklin and neighbors petition Pennsylvania Assembly to stop waste dumping and remove tanneries from Philadelphia's commercial district.
1762-1769 Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.
1775 English scientist Percival Pott finds that coal is causing an unusually high incidence of cancer among chimney sweeps.
1799 Manhattan Company formed to build water line. Company survives as Chase Manhattan Bank.
1817 U.S. Secretary of Navy authorized to reserve lands producing hardwoods for constructing naval ships.
1832 Arkansas Hot Springs established as a national reservation, setting a precedent for Yellowstone and eventually, a national park system.
1837 Benjamin McCready writes pioneering essay on occupational medicine and conditions of New York City slums.
1842 Edwin Chadwick writes "The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain." Report is first scientific inquiry about infectious disease, child mortality, and the link to polluted water supplies and lack of sanitation.
1843 Royal Commission inquiries begin; dreadful working conditions, child labor, public health problems exposed.
1854 John Snow, London doctor, maps spread of cholera in Broad Street neighborhood and traces cases to a contaminated drinking water pump. Snow's epidemiological studies support "contagionist" views, partly supplanting "sanitarian" views about public health.
1863 George Perkins Marsh writes Man and Nature: The Earth as Modified by Human Action, with emphasis on forest preservation and soil and water conservation.
1860s-1880s French scientist Louis Pasteur's germ theory of disease revolutionizes concepts of public health, making it possible to isolate and treat specific diseases.
1871 U.S. Fish Commission formed to study decline of coastal fisheries.
1873 London fog kills 1150 people. Similar incidents in 1880, 1882, 1891, and 1892.
1875 British Publish Health Act consolidates authority to deal with pollution, occupational disease, and other problems.
1880s First U.S. municipal smoke abatement laws aimed at reducing black smoke and ash from factories, railroads, and ships. Regulation under local boards of health.
Progressive Era (1890-1920)
1891 Forest protection bill passes Congress. Thirteen million acres are set aside by 1893.
1892 Sierra Club founded.
1899 Refuse Act prevents some obvious pollution of streams and places Corps of Engineers in charge of permits and regulation.
1900 Automobile is welcomed as bringing relief from pollution. New York City, with 120,000 horses, scrapes up 2.4 million pounds of manure every day.
1905 National Audubon Society organized.
1905 U.S. Forest Service created.
1906 Food and Drug Administration founded.
1907 USDA Animal Health and Plant Health Inspection Service founded.
1908 Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius argues that the greenhouse effect from coal and petroleum use is warming the globe.
1909 Glasgow, Scotland, winter inversions and smoke accumulations kill over 1000 people.
1909 Bureau of Mines founded to promote safety and welfare of miners. Bureau and the Public Health Service begin studies of lung diseases.
1913 William T. Hornaday, head of New York Zoological Society, writes Our Vanishing Wildlife, Its Extermination and Preservation.
1914 Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Mines, and Public Health Service begin pollution surveys of streams and harbors. Reports filed by early
1920s show an accumulation of heavy damage from oil dumping, mine runoff, untreated sewage, and industrial waste.
The Roaring Twenties (1920-1930)
1920 Mineral Leasing Act opens up rich deposits on federal lands for token rental fees.
1921 General Motors researchers discover tetraethyl lead as an antiknock gasoline additive.
1922 Amelia Maggia, first of the "Radium Girls," dies of radiation poisoning. She was a dial painter with U.S. Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey.
1924 Oil Pollution Act passed, prohibiting discharge from any vessel within the 3-mile limit, except by accident.
1926 First large-scale survey of air pollution in the United States, in Salt Lake City.
1926 First large-scale survey of air pollution in the United States, in Salt Lake City.
1926 Surgeon General's committee of experts reluctantly permit ethyl leaded gasoline back on the fuel market.
1928 Public Health Service begins checking air pollution in eastern U.S. cities, reporting sunlight cut by 20 to 50 percent in New York City.
Depression and World War II (1930-1945)
1930 Meuse River Valley killer smog incident, Belgium, 3-day inversion kills 63 people, with 6000 made ill.
1936 National Wildlife Federation formed.
1936 Alice Hamilton, tireless crusader for worker health, retires from Harvard University faculty.
1939 St. Louis smog episode spurs serious smoke abatement campaign, switch from soft coal to hard coal and fuel oil.
Postwar Era (1945-1960)
1945 Corps of Engineers abandons Potomac River dam after a storm of controversy.
1947 Los Angeles Air Pollution Control District formed.
1948 Twenty people dead, 600 hospitalized in Donora, Pennsylvania, smog attack.
1948 Six hundred deaths in London due to "killer fog." 1948 Aldo Leopold writes A Sand County Almanac.
1949 Izaak Walton League writes "Crisis Spots in Conservation," identifying specific water projects to be opposed.
1952 Three to four thousand people die in London "killer fogs."
1953 New York smog incident kills between 170 and 260 people in November.
1955 Congress passes Air Pollution Research Act.
1956 Another killer smog in London; 1000 people die.
1958 First Public Health Service conference on air pollution.
1959 California becomes first to impose automotive emissions standards.
1960 Clean Water Act passes Congress.
1961 International Clean Air Congress held in London.
1961 World Wildlife Fund founded.
1962 Another London smog; 750 people die.
Era of Environmental Reform (1960-1980)
1962 Rachel Carson writes Silent Spring.
1963 Congress passes Clean Air Act with $95 million for study and cleanup efforts at local, state, and federal levels.
1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between United States and U.S.S.R. (Russia) stops above-ground tests of nuclear weapons.
1964 Congress passes Wilderness Act, creating National Wilderness Preservation System.
1965 Congress passes Water Quality Act setting standards for states.
1965 Weather inversion creates 4-day air pollution incident in New York City; 80 people die.
1967 Environmental Defense Fund formed.
1968 The Population Bomb by Paul Erlich published.
1969 Alaska oil fields opened for exploitation.
1970 Dennis Hayes organizes first Earth Day.
1970 Congress establishes Environmental Protection Agency. Also Clean Air Act and National Environmental Policy Act passed.
1972 Congress passes Federal Water Pollution Control Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Ocean Dumping Act.
1973 Eighty nations sign the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
1973 Arab oil embargo panics U.S. and European consumers; prices quadruple despite the fact that no real shortage exists.
1974 Congress Passes Safe Drinking Water Act.
1975 Atlantic salmon return to Connecticut River after 100-year absence.
1976 National Academy of Science report on CFCs (chlorofluorocarbon) gasses warns of damage to ozone layer.
1976 Congress passes Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) to regulate hazardous waste and garbage.
1977 U.S. Department of Energy is created.
1977 Love Canal, New York, evacuated after discovery of hazardous waste near school.
1979 Three Mile Island incident.
Recent Environmental History (1980-2000)
1980 Times Beach incident where waste oil containing dioxin is sprayed on roads
1980 Superfund legislation directs EPA to clean up abandoned toxic waste spills.
1983 Dec. 3, Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide Co. fertilizer plant leaks chemicals that kill 2000 people, and another 8000 die of chronic effects.
1986 April 26. Chernobyl nuclear reactor explodes in Ukraine. Immediate deaths are numbered at 31, midterm deaths are estimated around 4200.
1987 The Montreal Protocol international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals signed by 24 countries, including the United States, Japan, Canada, and European Economic Community (EEC) nations.
1988 International treaty bans ocean dumping of wastes.
1989 March 24. Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons.
1990 United Nations warns that global temperature rise might be as much as 2°F in 35 years, recommends reducing CO2 emissions worldwide.
1992 June 3-14 Earth Summit is held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
1997 December 11. Kyoto Protocol adopted by United States and 121 other nations.
Write a 350- to 700-word Part A summary of at least three risk Assignment innovations that were changed or developed in the past 100 years.
• Use Table 1.1 (Ch. 1) in Human and Ecological Risk Assignment as a guide to understanding the origins of ecological and human risk Assignment beginning with the industrial revolution.
• Cite at least two outside sources to summarize the risk Assignment innovations.
Part B: Ecological Risk Assignment Framework
Resource: Figure 6.1 (Ch. 6) in Human and Ecological Risk Assignment
Provide a 350- to 700-word Part B response to the following prompts:
• Describe the four main steps of the framework for ecological risk analysis described in Human and Ecological Risk Assignment. The response must involve problem definition analysis, characterization, management decision making, and communicating results to the risk manager.
• How do the four main topics of the framework interrelate?
• Why is this framework important to a risk Assignment? How is it used?
Combine Part A and Part B into one paper.
Format the paper consistent with APA guidelines.