Objectives:
This exercise will give you practice in reading a risk assessment document, comprehending it, and communicating the main points to a lay audience. To show your understanding of the risk assessment, your group will do a quantitative analysis of the uncertainty resulting from one item in the risk assessment. Each term paper group has been assigned to a different risk assessment document:
* these two files have oddly disappeared in the last two weeks. Pick someone from your group to email me ([email protected]) and I will send my copies.
Products:
Each group will prepare two documents: a lay summary of the human health risk assessment plus a report showing the detailed calculation of the quantitative uncertainty analysis. The requirements for these two parts are:
Lay Summary
You should choose a format for your lay summary that will communicate effectively. Your lay summary will be graded based on the extent to which it is:
o Short: no page limit, but the shorter it is (while still being clear and complete), the better your grade. Don’t be too happy about not having to write much because it’s actually going to be quite a challenge to summarize succinctly
o Clear: no jargon, well-organized, advanced concepts explained simply. Use formatting (bolding, bullets, boxed definitions, etc.) to the extent it will help your clarity
o
Complete: your
audience must come away with a basic understanding of the approach to and
results of the calculations, including your extra uncertainty analysis (see
below)
Quantitative Uncertainty Analysis
To show your understanding of the risk assessment, your group will select one item in the risk assessment that is uncertain, choose a different value for this item than was used in the original document, and perform the calculations needed to determine the effect of the changed value on the results of the risk assessment. Grading will be based on your calculations being correct and complete, and your report being clear.
The report should have the
following sections
o Introduction: Brief summary of the risk assessment as a whole, plus what parameter your group selected to change and what different value you chose and why
o Calculations: Equations and tables showing the calculations and results both in the original risk assessment and your modification
o Conclusion and Discussion: Brief narrative about the quantitative uncertainty generated by your chosen parameter, in the context of overall uncertainty
o References: The original risk assessment is one required reference; in addition, list any source(s) of alternative values for your parameter and any documents or web sites you consulted
Notes:
¨ Some of the assigned documents are very long; do not feel that you have to read every word. Skimming long technical documents effectively is a good skill to have. Also, budget your time so you can read the document on a computer and not waste the paper printing it out.
¨ Many of these documents contain, in addition to the human health risk assessment, an ecological assessment. This does not have to be covered in your lay summary or in the summary in the introduction to the uncertainty paper.
¨ You might be tempted to use a software program to judge the “reading level” of your lay summary. I have found such programs easy to fool by keeping sentence length to six words or less, but this actually makes the writing harder to understand. In my opinion, your own common sense is more effective in making sure the writing is clear.
¨ I expect you to divide up the work but please make sure each member of the group contributes to both documents, if only in an editing and fact-checking capacity. All members should communicate effectively with each other. It looks bad to have contradictory statements in a single document.
¨ Don’t plagiarize. If you find that a document on the EPA web site or a CNN article has the perfect phrasing, put it in quotes and cite the source, or better yet, improve on perfection.