Category Archives: Risk Assessment Methodologies

Understanding Risk Assessment as a form of Sustainable and Green Remediation

Posted on January 2, 2023 by Blair

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to write more posts that explain, in plain language, how our environmental regime in BC protects the public with respect to contaminated sites and to help clear up common misconceptions about contaminated sites. … Continue reading →

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Risk Assessment Methodologies, Risk Communication, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Why you needn’t fear the “Dirty Dozen” fruits and vegetables

Posted on April 14, 2022 by Blair

There are certain things you can count on with the coming of spring. Two of the earliest are the arrival of the first Mexican and Californian strawberries in the produce aisle and the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) annual “Dirty Dozen” … Continue reading →

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Risk, Risk Assessment Methodologies, Risk Communication | 1 Comment

How understanding Type I and Type II errors and p-values helps in assessing the conclusions of the Ramazzini Institute 13-week pilot study on Glyphosate

Posted on March 24, 2019 by Blair

As regular followers of this blog know, my graduate research involved developing systems to allow data collected by researchers to be evaluated for reliability and made available for subsequent re-use by other researchers. I carried out my research in an … Continue reading →

Posted in Chemistry and Toxicology, Risk, Risk Assessment Methodologies, Risk Communication, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Understanding the difference between a “hazard” and a “risk” or why scare stories about glyphosate and pesticides in your food shouldn’t frighten you

Posted on March 21, 2019 by Blair

I have written a lot at this blog about how chemical risks are communicated to the public and so I am often asked about news stories depicting the latest science scare story. Sometimes they are handled badly, like the CTV … Continue reading →

Posted in Risk, Risk Assessment Methodologies, Risk Communication, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

On pipelines, oil-by-rail, and the relative risk of catastrophic spills in the aquatic environment

Posted on July 25, 2016 by Blair

As my regular readers know besides this blog I also write a blog at the Huffington Post. It typically consists of shorter versions on my pieces here. Well my most recent post on the Trans-Mountain Expansion project has received a … Continue reading →

Posted in Canadian Politics, Energy East, Oil Sands, Pipelines, Risk, Risk Assessment Methodologies, Risk Communication, Trans Mountain | 16 Comments

Risk Assessment Epilogue: Have a bad case of Anecdotes? Better call an Epidemiologist

Posted on February 12, 2015 by Blair

In my series on risk assessment I ended by noting that policy-makers can’t only rely on risk assessments when it comes to establishing whether contaminants are actually having an effect on a population. The reason for this is that risk … Continue reading →

Posted in Risk Assessment Methodologies | 9 Comments

Risk Assessment Methodologies Part 3: the Risk Assessment Process

Posted on February 9, 2015 by Blair

Over the course of the last few posts I have discussed components of the risk assessment process. As I’ve discussed, the process of conducting a formalized risk assessment is long-established as scientists have been doing them for years and have … Continue reading →

Posted in Risk Assessment Methodologies | 5 Comments

Risk Assessment Methodologies Part 2: Understanding “Acceptable Risk”

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Blair

In my last post I wrote about the basic concepts of toxicology including dose/response relationships and the concept of a de minimis risk. Today I am going to expand on that concept by discussing what represents an “acceptable risk” in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Risk Assessment Methodologies | 8 Comments

Risk Assessment Methodologies Part 1: Understanding de minimis risk

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Blair

In my last post I talked about big numbers and how they can cause confusion in the minds of the media and the public. In this post I want to discuss the other side of the coin: extremely small numbers … Continue reading →

Posted in Risk Assessment Methodologies | 14 Comments

How Big and Small Numbers Influence Science Communication: Understanding Fuel Spill Volumes

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Blair

This weekend I got a tweet from a friend who wanted everyone on her twitter list to be deeply concerned about the remaining oil from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (more on that later). In reading … Continue reading →

Posted in Oil Sands, Pipelines, Risk Assessment Methodologies | 7 Comments