Revised Risk Assessment Research Articles

The Incremental Benefits of a Forensic Accounting Course on Skepticism and Fraud-Related Judgments

This study examines the extent to which providing a course that emphasizes forensic accounting influences students skepticism and fraud-related judgments. We follow a cohort of students (trained students) who have enrolled in a forensic accounting course and examine their fraud judgments at various points in time - the first day of instruction, the last day of instruction, and seven months later. We compare these fraud judgments to a control group of students who have completed a typical audit sequence (untrained students) and to a panel of fraud experts. We find that when confronted with a non-conforming account, trained students provide significantly higher initial risk assessments post-training 1) than they did pre-training and 2) than did the untrained students. This suggests that the specialized course may lead to increased skepticism. We also find, in general, that post-training students assigned somewhat higher relevancy ratings to fraud risk factors than did a panel of experts; while the untrained students ascribed significantly less relevance than the experts did to these same facts. In addition, after exposure to fraud risk factors, trained students provided higher revised risk assessments post-training than they did pre-training. Finally, we find that seven months after the course, the trained students' performance is sustained, suggesting that the effects produced by taking a fraud-specific forensic accounting course persist.

Supply with Platelet Concentrates from the Point of View of a Blood Donation Service of the Bavarian Red Cross

Background: It is known that pooled platelet concentrates derived from buffy coat (PCs) have several disadvantages compared to platelet concentrates produced by platelet apheresis (APCs). Therefore, all blood products issued by the Bavarian Red Cross blood banks (BSD/BRK) (18,000 products/year) were produced by single donor apheresis. The main reason not to produce PCs was the elevated viral and bacterial infection risk during the last decade. But also the four-fold increased exposition to HLA and PLA antigens and the poor quality (in the sense of white and red cell contamination) of PCs (especially the ones produced with the platelet-rich plasma method) played a role to abstain from these products. Material and Methods: We performed a risk assessment to evaluate both products with regard to the actual testing and production methods, considering recently published data. However, a statistical calculation of the risks associated with the use of PCs or APCs with regard to different infectious agents with various prevalences was not done. Results: The dramatically reduced risk for the transmission of HIV, HBV or HCV accompanying the implementation of improved antibody tests and of NAT minipool testing, the introduction of 100% leukocyte filtration, the conversion of PC production from the platelet-rich to the buffy coat method, and recent data on the risk of transmission of bacterial infections resulted in a equal assessment of APCs and PCs. Conclusion: As a consequence of this revised risk assessment, we supply our hospitals with both products APCs and buffy coat-derived PCs (pools of 4 donors). For clinical use we considered both products as equally effective, except for patients who have multiple antibodies and need HLA-typed platelets.

Risk Assessment under FQPA: Case Study with Chlorpyrifos

Key science policies have had significant impact on the evolving implementation of the Food Quality and Protection Act (FQPA) (PL 104–170, 1996) by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The impact of four of these policies will be examined using the risk assessment for chlorpyrifos as a case study. These policies are selection of a regulatory endpoint, use of animal data without consideration of human data for setting the reference dose, a 10× FQPA safety factor, and use of the 99.9 percentile of modeled consumer exposure in the acute dietary assessment. Each of these policy decisions had individual impact that was then compounded as cumulative impact on the revised risk assessment for chlorpyrifos conducted by the US EPA in 2000 [Federal Register Notice 65(159) (2000) 49982]. But embedded within each science policy, there are assumptions which may be too conservative and which together have resulted in a very large multiplicative reduction in the allowable exposure limits for chlorpyrifos in the US. These new exposure limits are quite different from other regulatory standards around the world. There is third party opposition to many of these policies and many believe the understanding of the relationship between exposure and what is known about human and animal responses to chlorpyrifos has been clouded. These changes in policy insert a new level of conservatism into the scientific statement of risk and create confusion that threatens to weaken the credibility of the regulatory process.

Application of the Benchmark Method to Risk Assessment of Trichloroethene

An alternative approach for risk assessment of nongenotoxic substances, the benchmark method, has been evaluated and applied to trichloroethene as a test case. The benchmark dose is the dose that corresponds to a specific increase in risk, normally 1 or 10%. Experimental data from the literature on trichloroethene were used for these calculations. Eighty sets of data on effects on liver, kidney, the central nervous system, and tumors were analyzed. All no-observed-effect levels (NOELs) were higher than the benchmark dose corresponding to 1% extra risk, and 42% of the NOELs and 93% of the lowest-observed-effect levels (LOELs) were higher than the benchmark dose corresponding to 10% extra risk. The present study confirms that the benchmark methodology gives a more detailed picture of dose-response relationships than risk assessments using the NOEL/LOEL approach and facilitates comparisons between various toxicity studies. However, the polynomial regression models used in the present study quite often failed to fit the experimental data. Despite the advantages with the benchmark approach, several factors must be considered in the risk. assessment process. In the case of trichloroethene, a revised risk assessment using the benchmark approach would lead to a similar guideline value as the traditional NOEL/LOEL approach.

Risk assessment for ingested inorganic arsenic: A review and status report

Arsenic presents several unique problems in risk assessment. First, there is no good animal model for arsenic as a carcinogen, although in humans arsenic exposure through inhalation is judged to cause lung cancer and ingested inorganic arsenic is judged to cause skin cancer. Second, detoxification of arsenic through methylation is believed to be important, but the mechanisms and the quantitative relationships are not yet understood.EPA provided a risk assessment for ingested inorganic arsenic in its 1984 Health Assessment Document and a revised version in 1988. In both cases EPA calculated a cancer potency or slope factor using epidemiological data from Taiwan. EPA's standard or default risk assessment procedure is to use the linear coefficient from the multistage model in order to calculate cancer risk. This procedure was challenged by the EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) in a report to the Administrator in September of 1989. The SAB recommended that EPA "(1) develop a revised risk assessment based on estimates of the delivered dose of non-detoxified arsenic to target tissues, and (2) consider the potential reduction in cancer risk due to detoxification in establishing an MCL for arsenic".This paper will draw upon the author's experience with the SAB to summarise major issues in arsenic risk assessment and to examine how these issues might be resolved through further research.