The Center strives to identify, characterize and evaluate public health risks associated with environmental, occupational and agricultural exposure to chemicals and environmental agents. The Center is part of the Florida Center for Environmental Studies. The web site for the Center for Risk Excellence offers several resources for risk professionals, including the full text of current and back issues of the newsletter Risk Excellence Notes and information on risk assessment tools. The goals of this comparative risk project include addressing environmental problems important to small towns and rural areas, identifying environmental risks unique to Ohio's Appalachian Region, and producing an objective view of the conflict between economic development and environmental protection. Scientific knowledge developed in the research is then integrated by multi-disciplinary teams to develop more effective and less costly risk management strategies for solving environmental problems.
Research is focused in several major areas described at the site.
The Office of Research and Standards of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection heads the state's risk assessment work. Its duties include conducting environmental and toxicological research, defining and updating acceptable levels of human exposure to environmental pollutants, and advising all other programs of the state Department of Environmental Protection on the health and environmental effects of specific incidents, sites and toxic materials. Chartered by Congress in 1863, the National Academy of Sciences is a national organization of distinguished scholars mandated to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Also on line are job openings . For such regulations, the Reorganization Act requires USDA to conduct a thorough analysis that makes clear the nature of the risk, alternative ways of reducing it, the reasoning that justifies the proposed rule, and a comparison of the likely costs and benefits of reducing the risk.