NAP- Science and Decision -Advancing Risk Assessment - Pre-Publication by National Academies Publications -USA

I was hoping to do a long awaited introduction to USA's National Academies Published reports -NAP publications, which I have been portraying on several of my blogs, freely and shamelessly, without comment - especially materials science and innovation related publication according to relevance to my blog approaches and focus - unforgivable!

The US Nation Academies include: The Academy of Sciences, The Academy of Engineering, The Institute of Medicine and The Research Council.

NAP are in the process of redesigning their online presentation using a rather neat Widget, proposing attractive report cover images and buttons for easy access to free online reading short summaries (pdf), executive summaries (pdf) and RSS feed printing individual pages and of course a paid print edition. Although outwardly similar in form, my own humble first "SpringWidget ®" for feed presentation and sharing-distribution, is pale in comparison.

Here, I have chosen to comment on a very recent publication (2008) "Science and Decision: Advancing Risk Analysis" which I found via their RSS widget button while up-dating previous widgets on Materials Science and Engineering [my blog].

Great I thought, it fits my "This-Above-All_BOOKS_JOURNALS _TOOLS" blog focus - "It's all in the name " so to speak. [NB notice the previous link takes you to a new page where the NAP reports are housed, complicated?]

All three apply: Books, Journals and Tools-Widgets. Scroll or mouse-over my leader banner above. "Conversation" for the focus I am trying to give to the "This-Above-All series (3 blogs)

I first consulted the short summary (pdf) which I found most interesting - bringing focus to the complex subject of Risk Assessment. From this summary I had a "first impressions feeling" as very much an outsider, albeit of english mother tongue, that one had to, sort of, read between the line. Not surprisingly carefully worded concern appeared to be expressed on the " difficult challenges" facing the informative friendly US Environmental Protection Agency-EPA.

I have on several occasions found well presented basic information on the EPA website which has been useful in my Innocentive® Challenge proposed solution submissions. [Too friendly not enough Clout?] Also strangely, an example on trichloroethylene given in the introduction dated from 1980's on, when my own experience in practice - my first company training as a student "Trichlo" could only be used in industrial baths equipped with aspiration (1970's?)

Prudence led me to examine the full report. Unfortunately, I found I could not read the very small print. It turned out that I had chosen to blog my first and only pre-publication version! Or was I fortunate? There is a strict warning not to reproduce nor alter the official summary-So I heartily suggest you consult the links on my blog or search NAP's Site for your favourite subjects. As yet I have not found the contact address to address my small contribution to what appears to be an interesting contribution to Advance Risk Assessment and so mitigate worst consequences. I can't wait to get a quick read at the full version. In fact my mishap as often on Internet lead me to find fully readable NAP reports related to and precursors to the above.

Source

Science and Decision -Advancing Risk Assessment-summary and
Recommended Related title: Models in Environmental Regulatory Decision
Link to both NAP-Widget presentation my LHS-Left-Hand-Side menu
My Blog This-Above-All_Books_Journals_Tools

Full NAP Catalogue.