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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
The view that risks and hazards are distinct concepts is commonly held in the scholarly literature on risk especially in the English-speaking community. The dichotomy is also enshrined in key documents commissioned or developed by Governments to help regulators conceptualise, regulate and communicate harmful events. Yet, the implications of risk-based versus hazard-based regulations have often been overlooked. Scholars have only conducted limited discussions, in contrast to the extensive debates about the respective merits of evidence-based and precautionary-based regulation. Lofstedt's article “Risk versus Hazard – How to Regulate in the 21st Century” offers a new and important perspective on the relationship between science and regulatory decisions. Lofstedt essentially argues that the conceptual distinction between hazards (the potential for a substance, activity or process to cause harm or adverse effect) and risks (a combination of likelihood and the severity of a substance, activity or process to cause harm) presents a meaningful classification to analyse regulations.
1 National Research Council (NRC) Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process (Washington DC: National Academy Press 1983)Google ScholarPubMed; UK Royal Society, Risk: Analysis, Perception, Management (London: Royal Society 1992)Google Scholar; Fischhoff, Baruch, Watson, Stephen R., and Hope, Chris, “Defining Risk”, 17 Policy Sciences (1984), pp. 123 et sqq., at p. 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jaeger, Carlo C., Renn, Ortwin, Rosa, Eugene A. and Webler, Thomas, Risk, Uncertainty, and Rational Action (London and Sterling, VA: Earthscan 2001)Google Scholar.
2 HSE, The Tolerability of risks from nuclear power stations (Sudbury: HSE Books, 1988)Google Scholar; Health Council of the Netherlands, Not All Risks are Equal, Publication No. 1995 06E, Committee on Risk Measures and Risk Assessment (The Hague: Health Council of the Netherlands 1995); Better Regulation Commission (BRC), Risk, Responsibility and Regulation. Whose risk is it anyway? (London: Better Regulation Commission 2006)Google Scholar.
3 For a recent account of these debates see the edited volume by Wiener, Jonathan B., Rogers, Michael D., Hammitt, James K., and Sand, Peter H., The Reality of Precaution. Comparing Risk Regulation in the United States and Europe (Washington DC and London: Resources For the Future 2011)Google Scholar.
4 UK Royal Society, Risk: Analysis, Perception, Management (London: Royal Society 1992)Google Scholar.
5 See, for example, Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations 2002 SI 2002/2776; BS EN 1127–1 2007 Explosive atmospheres, explosion prevention and protection, basic concepts and methodology.
6 Health and Safety Executive (HSE), Improving health and safety. An analysis of HSE's risk communication in the 21st century, Research report RR785 (Norwich: Her Majesty's Stationary Office 2010).
7 Major Incident Investigation Board (MIIB), “The Buncefield Incident 11 December 2005. The final report of the Major Incident Investigation Board”, available on the Internet at <http://www.buncefieldinvestigation.gov.uk/reports/index.htm#final> (last accessed on 30 March 2011), at p. 11.
8 HSE, Improving health and safety, supra note 6.
9 MIIB, “Recommendations on land use planning and the control of societal risk around major hazard sites”, 2008, available on the Internet at <http://www.buncefieldinvestigation.gov.uk/reports/comahreport3.pdf> (last accessed on 30 March 2011), at p. vii.
10 Ibid.