Lessons Learned from Practitioners about Risk Communication during Crises and Chronic Events - 23433

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has one of the largest clean up tasks at its nuclear weapon production and testing facilities, which may not be completed at some of its larger sites until the end of this century. One of the goals of DOE-Environmental Management is protecting human health and the environment. Communication plays a key role in assuring federal and Tribal agencies, regulatory agencies, and different Tribal members and Stakeholders that DOE's practices are protective and assuring that science-based decisions are consistent with environmental justice. While risk communication is an evolving field requiring multi-directional interactions among government officials, health and environmental professionals, industry scientists, activists, and the public, ideally it is also a multi-group collaboration leading to better decisions. For many of the people in administrative or academic positions, communicating with the public is a regular part of the job, occurs on a daily basis, and communicators may not realize the value of describing their experiences and sharing what they have learned about communication itself. The objectives of this paper are to summarize the special issue of Risk Analysis entitled 'Risk Communication during Crises and Chronic Exposures' and to foster discussions about the role of risk communication in environmental remediation and restoration. We focus on the experiences and lessons learned from interviewing 19 experienced professionals about the environmental, health, or ecological issues they faced; how they approached risk communication; who they communicated with; and their advice regarding communication. The people interviewed included environmental health professionals, risk assessors, environmental scientists, regulators, and lawyers, and they communicated with many different people at different governmental levels, with different Tribal members and stakeholders. The crises and chronic exposures they communicated about included PCBs, mercury, radionuclides, and other pollutants, as well as exposures to oil spills, overexploitation of resources, and climate change. One theme that emerged was the need to base effective risk communication on up-to-date science information because new information, models, case studies, and changes in population levels, land use, ecosystem structure, and climate can change the sources of contamination, the hazards, and the possible risks. A key message was the need to develop trust, which is a long, time-consuming, but rewarding process. Mutual trust, and respecting local, indigenous and Tribal knowledge are important components of developing effective risk communication with others. Consulting discipline-based scientists, professional risk communicators, and media relations specialists are consistent with environmental justice, diversity, and equity. Together, the interviews present a wealth of experience over decades by professionals who faced acute and chronic crises that required science-based, thoughtful, insightful, and caring communication. This paper discusses the commonalities and differences that emerged from the collection of interviews. The individual interviews, as well as discipline papers on human and ecological health and safety, and on risk communication theory, can be found in this special Risk Analysis issue (Volume 42, Issue 11). (authors)