The Public Advisory Group was the central group in the risk ranking phase of Ohio's Comparative Risk Project for two reasons: they were responsible 1) for coordinating public outreach activities and 2) for ultimately analyzing and synthesizing both technical and public information into the risk ranking. The group developed the following mission statement:
The mission of the Public Advisory Group of the Ohio Comparative Risk Project is to facilitate and ensure the use of teamwork and consensus among the people of Ohio in creating a plan of action that merges science and public values as the foundation for ongoing environmental policy and decision making to address environmental risk in Ohio.
The PAG volunteers recognized early in the process that they were not demographically-representative of Ohio's citizens. With this understanding, they agreed to actively solicit information from as many groups and individuals as possible and to rely on public outreach data and technical information as much as possible in their ranking.
Residual risk. The PAG asked themselves if they were ranking "residual" risks, assuming the existence of present regulations or risk management mechanisms, or if they were ranking absolute risks, assuming the non-existence of any risk management. The group agreed to focus on residual risk or the risks that actually exist today. They felt residual risks were a better basis for risk ranking, because (i) such risks would be more easily understood by the public and legislators, and (ii) it would be easier to compile reliable technical data describing existing conditions than it will be to compile data describing hypothetical conditions. The group agreed to use residual risk in the ranking with the caveat that if existing regulations should change, then the ranking could change.
Non-risk factors. The PAG discussed the extent of non-risk factors (such as the technical feasibility of reducing the risk, the economics of reducing the risk and public willingness to accept available options for reducing the risk) in the ranking phase of the project. They determined that the risk ranking process should provide a "baseline" assessment of the risks presented and should not be skewed by factors which relate to the feasibility of reducing those risks, because (i) feasibility issues will be addressed in the second phase of the project when risk management recommendations are developed, and (ii) the more criteria incorporated into the risk ranking phase, the more complicated the analysis becomes and the more difficult it will be to keep the process manageable.
Public outreach information. With the large amount of public outreach information gathered, the PAG needed a focused manner to factor the results of public outreach into the risk ranking process. They agreed that independent of the risk ranking process, the results of the public outreach effort are an important part of describing the "state of the environment" in Ohio. Accordingly, all available data should be presented and explained as part of the Report.
For the risk ranking portion of this report, the PAG sought a sense of the public's risk "values" to assist them in comparing the various types of risks identified in the technical workgroup reports. Even with extensive technical information, subjective policy judgments are an inescapable element of any comparison. For example, what is the relative emphasis placed on human health, ecosystem and quality-of-life risks? Further, within a category of risks (for example, human health), what is the relative emphasis placed on different criteria (for example, protection of future generation vs. lethal effects) within that category.
To produce a risk ranking, these sorts of tradeoffs--which are matters of policy rather than science--must be addressed. The PAG used its public outreach data, particularly the statewide telephone poll, to determine how Ohio's citizens wished to make such choices.
In addition to the public "values," the PAG's outreach efforts generated extensive data on public "perceptions" of the risks presented by various threats. The comparative risk process seeks to rank risks based on actual rather than perceived risk, so such data do not affect the human health or ecosystem rankings. However, when the public believes a condition presents a significant risk, the condition negatively impacts peace of mind, even if the actual risk is much lower than believed. Accordingly, the PAG incorporated public perception data into the quality-of-life ranking, via the peace of mind criterion.
The concepts regarding residual risk, non-risk factors, and the role of public outreach were taken into account as the PAG ranked the risks.