ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on values, perceptions, and ethics followed by a discussion of how and where these enter in the environmental risk decision-making process. Values and value judgments pervade the process of risk assessment, risk management, and risk communication as a major factor in environmental risk decision making. The very selection of methodology for decision making involves a value judgment. The selection of which contaminants to study and analyze involves value judgments. Perceptions are closely tied to values and for too many people the moral and ethical test is whether it feels right, and thus judgment is based too often only on feelings. The public suffers from a limitation in understanding in that some perceptions are inaccurate, risk information may frighten people, and strong beliefs are hard to modify. Scientists are seen as “meddling” with nature and callous to the ethical and social implications of major issues like nuclear weapons, genetic engineering, and similar issues.
