From the Editors

Abstract

This issue highlights public perception, homeland security, and exposure assessment. In 2009, considerable worldwide concern focused on an H1N1 influenza epidemic. Supported by the Italian Ministry of Health, Gabriele Prati found that public response to H1N1 was associated with the public's affective response even beyond cognitive and sociocontextual factors. Notably, institutional preparedness did not predict either affective response or recommended behaviors. We have published many articles about risk beliefs, values, and preferences associated with nuclear power plants. Sponsored by the National Science Council, Taiwan, Hung-Chih Hung and Tzu-Wen Wang map the spatial distribution of preferences for a second nuclear power plant in Taiwan, and they observe that many respondents perceive a nuclear power plant as an extremely high-risk facility, leading respondents to reject a proposed compensation payment. Hank Jenkins-Smith et al. examine the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a large nuclear defense waste management facility in southern New Mexico, to determine if public perceptions and preferences regarding nuclear waste management changed during the 1990s. Thirty-five statewide surveys show that acceptance of WIPP is greater among those whose residences are closest to the WIPP facility and even along the transport route (a surprise). Homeland security has become a major theme in our journal. Radiation exposure devices are weapons built by hiding a strong gamma-emitting source in a place frequented by the public. Using Monte Carlo simulation, Alessandro Tofani examined the impacts of a weapon's location and the shape of the facility on public exposure. Mohsen Golalikhani and Jun Zhuang create a game theory design that permits defenders to assign continuous-level defensive resources to layers of proximate targets. Funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the model offers some interesting options to defenders to invest in protecting multiple targets rather than a single one. The last six articles are about exposure. Scaling down toxicity estimates from animal studies to humans is an ongoing challenge for risk assessors. Lidia Burzala-Kowalczyk and Geurt Jongbloed use regression analysis to test an existing model and find a good fit but high variance estimates and hence wide-ranging prediction estimates. Ye Cao and Christopher Frey consider the contribution of tobacco smoke to fine particulate concentration. Supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health, the authors evaluate EPA's current models and offer both valuable insights about and suggestions for improving the estimates. Timothy Downs et al. examine the issue of assessing multiple stressors in densely developed urban environments. Using Worcester, Massachusetts as a pilot and supported by the U.S. NIEHS, the authors develop a vulnerability assessment tool and test it with 80 households. Turkey, like many countries, faces the issue of how to use limited resources to manage contaminated sites. Funded by the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey, Elcin Kentel et al. discuss the difficulties of developing guidelines because of different definitions and methodologies in different countries, existence of inconsistent risk assessment tools, difficulties in accessing relevant documents and reports, and lack of specific data. The journal EIC recalls being involved with a very public soil contamination case where general soil/dust ingestion rates were used in risk assessments when more precise pathway-specific values would have been preferred. Funded by the U.S. EPA, Haluk Ozkaynak et al. develop a modeling approach that estimates dust and soil ingestion by pathway, source type, population group, geographic location, and other factors, offering what they assert is a better characterization of exposures than a single value estimate. Michael Williams et al. propose a framework for conducting microbial food safety risk assessments leading to probabilistic estimates of uncertainty and variability in input parameters. The authors test the model with Campylobacter in chicken. Finally, Jean-Michel Panoff reviews the 2009 book Risks and Environment: Interdisciplinary Research on Societal Vulnerability by Sylvia Beccerra and Anne Peltier. He notes that the authors attempt to show through the many articles in the edited collection that societal vulnerability to natural and environmental hazards is a concept that is being approached from multi-disciplinary perspectives.