ABSTRACT
More than ten federal statutes contain statements about risk and benefit assessment; the process of setting environmental standards increasingly rests on the analysis of risk. Regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), promulgate standards that reflect their policies on health risk. This chapter discusses the treatment in law of several key issues in risk assessment. These are: the meaning of the 1980 Supreme Court ruling that OSHA must demonstrate that a standard is needed to remedy a "significant risk," and the resolution of the conflict between the desire for accuracy and the need to reduce hazardous exposures. The chapter reviews approaches that have been taken in balancing the economic costs against the benefits of risk reduction. In a case involving the use of acrylonitnle in beverage containers, the court interpreted the legal definition of additive as requiring that a substance migrate into food "in more than insignificant amounts."
