Expert judgement and lethal toxicity of inhaled chemicals

L.H.J. Goossens, Roger Cooke, F Woudenberg and P Van Der Torn

Journal of Risk Research, 1998, vol. 1, issue 2, 117-133

Abstract: The application of formal expert judgement for assessing quantitative data of the toxicity of large amounts of inhaled chemical substances after a potential major hazards incident is described. In this particular application, the expert assessments were used to derive probit relations for the acute lethal effects of five hazardous substances: ammonia, acrylonitrile, hydrogen fluoride, sulphur trioxide and azinphos-methyl. The purpose of the study was to develop a protocol for selecting experts and the elicitation and analysis of expert assessments, to apply this protocol to generate probit relations for representative substances, and to evaluate the overall performance of the protocol. The use of formal expert judgement includes quantitative estimates of variables, calibration of experts and representation of uncertainty on the variables. This enables analysts to optimize combined experts' assessments for establishing quantitative results for further use in probit relations. Twenty-seven experts, distributed over the five substances, gave medians and 90% central confidence bands of the lethal dose-response relations under several conditions. The calculated dose-response relations are shown and compared to existing probit relations with respect to its impact on risk assessment outputs. The calculated relations can be applied in quantitative risk assessments, for example, under the Dutch law on major hazards installations. The scientific and practical efforts and costs of using the expert judgement technique are described.

Date: 1998
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/136698798377222 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:1:y:1998:i:2:p:117-133

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/136698798377222

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().