I’m extremely pleased to announce that Leslie Berman has joined the Risk Science Center team to work on the blog and social media, together with content over on our main website. Leslie is a first year Master’s student in the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education in the School of Public Health. Her interests [...]
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On April 20, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig experienced catastrophic failure, leading to the largest oil spill in marine history. Twelve months on, how is the spill affecting the health of workers and local residents, what are the lessons that can be learned for the future? This is the topic for the next in [...]
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For the past couple of years, a highly addictive and innovative on-line teen science engagement event has been run in the UK. I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here pairs groups of scientists with classes of teenagers for two weeks, and the teens bombard them questions – about anything and everything. On each of [...]
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Given the unfolding events around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, I took the opportunity last week to substitute my Risk Assessment lecture with a question and answer session with two University of Michigan health physics experts – Kim Kearfott and Jim Martin. It’s a bit like watching CSpan for an hour and [...]
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The webcomic kxcd.com has an intriguing and informative visualization of effective radiation doses from various sources, and the potential health implications. Highly recommended – both for encapsulating important information on radiation dose, and as an example of presenting complex information in a highly accessible form: (click image for full size version)
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Paul Voosen of Greenwire had a piece that is worth reading in yesterday’s New York Times on how our perceptions of radiation influence our response to events such as the Fukushima reactor crisis in Japan. Drawing on risk perception researchers such as Baruch Fischhoff and University of Michigan School of Public Health expert Brian Zikmund-Fisher, [...]
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Lauretta Ovadje is a doctoral student in the University of Michigan School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences. She is a recipient of a 2011 Risk Science Summer fellowship, and will be using the fellowship to support her research on the use of insecticide treated nets to prevent malaria in Nigeria. Why don’t [...]
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As I write this, I am reading news articles that indicate the confirmed number of dead following last week’s earthquake and tsunami is over 3,500, with the combined dead and missing count topping 11,000. These figures don’t even begin to reflect the number of people severely impacted by the disaster. This is a human health [...]
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The University of Michigan has posted this video from health physics expert Professor Kim Kearfott on the potential health implications of the unfolding crisis in Fukushima, Japan. the video was posted on March 15: Professor Kearfott is Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan College [...]
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“Human beings with the tears dried off.” That’s how Paul Slovic recently described the dry statistics that are supposed to help us understand the scope of human tragedies such as genocide and, more recently, the earthquakes and tsunamis that have devastated Japan. As Slovic and many others have shown, people are remarkably insensitive are to [...]
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Today’s New York Times blasts as its headline that “Radioactive Releases in Japan Could Last Months, Experts Say.” It’s the top bullet in the world news stage, and already many of my friends have expressed fears and dismay about the story by reposting it on Facebook. There is no question that the damage caused by [...]
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Twenty five years ago, during the Chernobyl disaster, I was a physics undergraduate in the UK. I clearly remember our lecturers at the time scrambling as they realized that, falling into complacency since earlier nuclear facility disasters such as Winscale in the UK and Three Mile Island in the US, they had neglected to give [...]
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As anyone who has followed my work over the past few years will know, I have a deep interest in the potential benefits and risks associated with emerging technologies, and in particular whether we can swing the balance towards benefits by thinking more innovatively about risk and how we address it. So it’s not surprising [...]
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This week’s issue of Science (4 MARCH 2011 VOL 331 SCIENCE, P 1136) contains an editorial signed by 8 professional societies offering their expertise in addressing chemical risks. In the editorial, the societies signal their alarm over the increasing pace of development of new chemicals, the increasing evidence that some of the new and existing [...]
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The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) have just posted a new video on the safe development of nanotechnology, as part of their series of nano educational podcasts. The video features Risk Science Center director Andrew Maynard, and can be viewed directly below. Get the Flash Player to see this content. The podcast was shot [...]
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I don’t believe it – once again I’ve let myself be talked into doing an event in Second Life. But this time it’s even worse – I’ll be hosting a combined second life and real-life event, and in effect acting as the medium between physical and virtual realities. The only compensation is that the subject [...]
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On April 20 2010 the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico experienced catastrophic failure, leading to the largest oil spill in marine history. At the time, little was known about how the spill would impact on workers, cleanup crews and local residents. What surprised many health professionals at the time though was [...]
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Cats, Birds and Wind Turbines – when risks and benefits are about more than just the numbers
by Al Franzblau on March 25, 2011
This is a story that caught my attention the other day. And while it is not directly related to human health risk, it does underline how complex decisions are often based on more than just the numbers that underlie impacts and benefits. While global warming has focused attention on the need for renewable energy sources, [...]
Tagged as: birds, cats wind turbines
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