Hazardous waste policy, community movements and the politics of Nimby: participatory risk assessment in the USA and Canada

Frank Fischer
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Frank Fischer: Rutgers University

Chapter 10 in Greening Environmental Policy, 1995, pp 165-182 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract During the late 1970s and 1980s news reports of oil spills, nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, near-disasters at Three-Mile Island, pesticides in the food chain and DDT damage to wildlife have frightened people around the world (Piller, 1991). The result has been a widespread distrust of industry and a collective fear of all chemical-processing facilities. As the public has become increasingly aware of the extent to which chemicals now pollute the environment, the result has been a new anxiety often described as ‘chemophobia’. Polls show that citizens are more concerned about the presence of toxic wastes than any other environmental problem, even though the Environmental Protection Agency maintains that it is not the most severe health threat. Problems such as the ozone hole and the greenhouse effect are said to be much riskier. Such public fear is seen by many experts and commentators to be irrational.

Date: 1995
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-137-08357-9_10

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