Ford Case as Viewed by: MPCA Risk Assessment Expert

FORD PLANT CASE STUDY

MPCA Risk Assessment Expert

You work for the Air Toxics Program in the Division of Air Quality at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. You appreciate the problem in Highland Park because, although you do not live there, on weekends you frequently bike along the river path that passes the Ford Plant.

You were dismayed by the incompleteness of the health risk assessment done by Ford's consultant. Despite your busy schedule, you felt obliged to prepare a second health risk assessment, based on more extensive and time-consuming research in the recent literature (not covered by the standard sources). Despite your best efforts, however, the report was still woefully incomplete by your standrads. Critical information was unavailable and you had to include all kinds of assumptions, which you carefully outlined in your report along with other uncertainties. In particular, having been trained in statistics, you are also sensitive to variation in a population sample, not readily apparent when figures are given as averages. You note, for example, that susceptibility and exposure will both vary widely in the population--that is, there are critical differences in assessing risk on the individual level versus risk on the group level. Your standards were thus always "conservative" in protecting the extremes of the population. Though you could not prove actual risks in most cases, you noted that adverse effects "could not be ruled out."

Some particular questions that you need to resolve:

Given the tentative nature of your scientific conclusions, what is an appropriate stance on Ford's current permit application? How do scientific assessments (objective) become transformed into ethical responsibilities (values)?
In particular, how should one respond ethically under conditions of risk and uncertainty, knowing that the scientific "solution" is to do more research before making a secure conclusion? In this case, was there a clear responsibility to the residents of Highland Park to conduct more patient research (before the results of such research were known)? If so, who is responsible?--and who pays for such studies? How much time can be allowed for research before decisions are made?

Be sure to read the Background carefully for information that is relevant to these questions and your position.

Remember that the aim in adopting a stakeholder's perspective is not to "act out" someone else's role or to make decisions according to some stereotyped view of how another person "should" act. Rather, you should focus on the stakeholder's concerns and consider how YOU would act in a similar situtation.