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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued proposed a federal drinking water standard for radon, in 1999. A final rule is anticipated from the EPA in 2005 or 2006. In this article, important additional insights are gleaned by applying an incremental net benefits perspective to the data and analyses presented by Vitaliano in a 2003 article published in this journal. In addition, updates to Vitaliano's risk analysis are made, based on emerging scientific evidence on the risks posed by radon at levels seen in residential settings. The updated analysis indicates the relevant policy insights that are obtained by applying an incremental net benefits approach in lieu of average net benefits, and suggests the proposed standard may require careful reconsideration.

Too often amongst policy makers and thought leaders an assumption is made that we must make a choice between tackling climate change and having a strong economy; tackling climate change and allowing poorer nations to develop; tackling climate change and having a secure energy system. However, a decade of advanced modelling tested against historical data has provided wide evidence that well-chosen policies can be implemented that avoid these apparent either/or choices. This highly interdisciplinary book provides an overview of potential pathways for the decarbonisation of the global economy. By examining the entire global economy, we show policy-makers and thought-leaders that greatly reducing the risks of climate change can be consistent with energy security, economic development in poor nations, and vibrant economies in already developed nations. Advanced models of the relationships between the economy, energy and climate change pioneered at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR) over the past decade provides a sound evidence base for decisions. This book examines not only the impacts of policies, but also the feasibility of bringing them forward and the ways in which energy, climate and economic policies can and must be joined up if climate, energy and economic goals are to be met globally. Economists, physicists, engineers, policy analysts, environmental scientists, climate scientists, political analysts, lawyers and computational scientists are brought together for the first time to produce analyses that make up a unique approach to a global problem that must be addressed sooner rather than later

Input‐output analysis is frequently used in studies of large‐scale weather‐related (e.g., Hurricanes and flooding) disruption of a regional economy. The economy after a sudden catastrophe shows a multitude of imbalances with respect to demand and production and may take months or years to recover. However, there is no consensus about how the economy recovers. This article presents a theoretical route map for imbalanced economic recovery called dynamic inequalities. Subsequently, it is applied to a hypothetical postdisaster economic scenario of flooding in London around the year 2020 to assess the influence of future shocks to a regional economy and suggest adaptation measures. Economic projections are produced by a macro econometric model and used as baseline conditions. The results suggest that London's economy would recover over approximately 70 months by applying a proportional rationing scheme under the assumption of initial 50% labor loss (with full recovery in six months), 40% initial loss to service sectors, and 10–30% initial loss to other sectors. The results also suggest that imbalance will be the norm during the postdisaster period of economic recovery even though balance may occur temporarily. Model sensitivity analysis suggests that a proportional rationing scheme may be an effective strategy to apply during postdisaster economic reconstruction, and that policies in transportation recovery and in health care are essential for effective postdisaster economic recovery.

AbstractThree strategies for reducing lead in water and blood lead level (BLL) were evaluated. Approximately 2,500 lead samples from 112 homes were analyzed to estimate lead reduction from full lead service line replacement (FLSLR). Corrosion‐control changes were evaluated using data from more than 20,000 community water systems (CWSs). The reduction in first‐liter median lead for utilities changing corrosion‐control treatment (CCT) to drop the 90th percentile from 15 to 10 μg/L was 0.4 μg/L, while the reduction in lead for the highest 10% of the population in those communities was 3.7 μg/L. Lowering the goal to 5 μg/L resulted in the median and top 10% lead reducing by 0.4 and 4.5 μg/L, respectively, although more utilities and hence children are impacted by the lower goal. The median home had a first‐L and profile average lead reduction of about 2 μg/L following FLSLR. Ten percent of the homes saw a reduction in profile average lead of over 17 μg/L after FLSLR. These reductions in lead were converted to changes in BLL, including the percentage and total number of children with BLL values above 3.5 and 5 μg/dl. Those results show that the reduction in total number of children above these targets is noticeably higher for the 5 μg/L goal due to the difference in impacted population. LSL replacement provides the greatest reduction in number of children above these two candidate target values of BLL.Article Impact StatementThe largest reduction in BLL resulted from FLSLR. This is consistent with NDWAC report that FLSLR has a larger impact than improving CCT.

The federal Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), as amended in 1996, enables benefit-cost analysis (BCA) to be used in setting federal drinking water standards, known as MCLs. While BCAs are typically conceived of as a tool to inform efficiency considerations by helping to identify MCL options that maximize net social benefits, in this paper we also illustrate how important equity and affordability considerations can be brought to light by suitably applying BCAs to drinking water regulations, especially in the context of communities served by relatively small water systems. We examine the applicability and relevance of health-health analysis (HHA), and provide an empirical evaluation of the risk tradeoffs that may be associated with the MCL established for arsenic. We find that the cost-associated risks may offset a nontrivial portion of the cancer risk reduction benefits attributed to the MCL (e.g., the additional adverse health impacts from the costs may be roughly half as large as the number of cancer cases avoided). This reveals the relevance of using the HHA approach for examining net benefits of MCLs in small drinking water utilities, and raises issues related to whether and how these cost-associated health risks should be considered in BCAs for drinking water standards.

This article describes the development of a weighted composite dose – response model for human salmonellosis. Data from previously reported human challenge studies were categorized into two different groups representing low and moderately virulent/pathogenic Salmonella strains based on a disease end point. Because epidemiological data indicate that some Salmonella strains are particularly pathogenic, and in the absence of human feeding study data for such strains, Shigella dysenteriae was used as a proxy for highly virulent strains. Three single‐hit dose – response models were applied to the human feeding study data and evaluated for best fit using maximum likelihood estimation: (1) the exponential (E‐1pop), (2) the two‐subpopulation exponential (E‐2pop), and (3) the Beta‐Poisson (BP). Based on the goodness‐of‐fit test, the E‐1pop and BP were the best‐fit models for low and moderately virulent/pathogenic Salmonella strains, and the E‐2pop and BP models were better for highly virulent/pathogenic strains. Epistemic analysis was conducted by determining the degree of confidence associated with the selected models, which was found to be 50%/50% (E‐1pop/BP) for low and moderately pathogenic Salmonella strains, and 9.8%/90.2% (E‐2pop/BP) for highly virulent strains. The degree of confidence for each component model and variations in the proportion of strains within each virulence/pathogenicity category were incorporated into the overall composite model. This study describes the influence of variation in strain virulence and host susceptibility on the shape of the population dose – response relationship.