26.1. Risk Assessment

There are many ways to view risks to a person’s health or safety. Some people will knowingly accept tremendous risk (such as in rock climbing or smoking), some expose themselves to risk perhaps without knowing (such as by sunbathing), and some refuse to be exposed at all to certain risks (such as extremely low concentrations of pesticides in food). Generally, people are much more accepting of risks that they choose (voluntary exposures) than to risks that are forced upon them (involuntary exposures). Also, people are generally much more accepting of risks that they understand than they are of risks that they do not understand. For example, the population at large tends to accept that human activity often degrades rivers and lakes with biol....