PMID: 11314738Apr 21, 2001Paper

Risks of hazardous waste sites versus asteroid and comet impacts: accounting for the discrepancies in U.S. resource allocation

Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis
M B Gerrard

Abstract

Approximately $6 billion is spent annually in the United States on the cleanup of sites regulated under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA, or Superfund). The current health risks posed by such sites are thought to be quite small; the expenditures are justified primarily as protecting hypothetical future residents of these sites. Approximately 0.05% of this amount, or $3 million, is spent annually by the U.S. government on the detection of asteroids or comets that could strike the earth. Such damaging impacts do occur from time to time--most recently in 1908 in an unpopulated region of Siberia--but no person is confirmed ever to have died as a result. Anticipated impacts over the course of 1 million years would yield deaths that, when annualized, total approximately 4,000 per year. The risk reduction goal for CERCLA is 15 orders of magnitude greater than that for asteroid/comet detection. A modest increase in resources devoted to asteroid detection would greatly increase the chances of early detection of a threatening object, allowing an effective defense to be attempted. This article argues that the much lower risk-to-resources ratio for CERCLA cleanups than for asteroid and comet ...Continue Reading

Citations

Mar 17, 2007·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·Louis Anthony Tony Cox
Dec 14, 2007·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·Jason G Matheny
Dec 18, 2014·Risk Analysis : an Official Publication of the Society for Risk Analysis·Steve Jacob, Nathalie Schiffino

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