Letter Report on the Development of a Model Ranking FDA Product Categories on the Basis of Health Risks

摘要

In 1986, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Thomas asked 75 scientists and managers to develop a report on the relative importance of various environmental threats that were mainly in EPA's jurisdiction. In 1987, the group issued Unfinished Business (EPA 1987), which categorized environmental threats in 31 problem areas, defined largely along existing programmatic lines. The group identified and divided the risks according to four important attributes with respect to the characterization of the 31 environmental problem areas: cancer risk, noncancer risk, ecologic risk, and welfare effects. The resulting report provided separate assessments (ranked low, medium, or high) for each of the four attributes. A key insight of Unfinished Business was that EPA's resource allocations appeared to be more in line with what the public perceived as the most important risks than with the priorities identified by the agency's experts. EPA asked its Science Advisory Board (SAB) to review the report, and the SAB released a follow-up report, Reducing Risk (EPA SAB 1990), which endorsed the broad comparative risk analysis (CRA) approach and produced findings similar to those in Unfinished Business.