Year
1988
Abstract
The Department of Transportation (DOT) has issued a request for comment on the need for risk assessments for routing hazardous materials. Prior DOT requirements for routing of large quantities of radioactive materials considered two primary components for accident health risk, accident frequency and population potentially exposed. This approach may be reasonable from the Federal viewpoint, but it leaves many unanswered questions at the state level for ultrahazardous materials. For example, how does a state make effective decisions regarding funding to improve roads (reduce accident probability) and improve emergency response (reduce accident consequence)? Some of these questions and a potential way to generate answers will be examined in this paper.