Doctoral Dissertation Research: Radon and the Evolution of Risk Assessment in Cold War America, 1945-1991

本论文的研究建议是支持一系列深入的，结构化的访谈关键人物在早期专业化的风险评估。这些口述历史将成为艾伦·贝尔斯论文中两章的重要基础，这两章论述了20世纪70年代末至90年代初风险评估在美国作为一个正式的专业领域的建立。该奖项将允许贝尔斯采访十个核心演员，证实论文的主要目标：审查风险评估作为一门科学所处的困境、影响其编纂的更广泛的社会和文化背景及其作为科学和技术政策信息来源的作用，本文的学术价值在于分析了正式风险评估的历史根源，一个专业化的帐户，是由一个新的角度来看，在两个案例研究的风险氡，辐射威胁在工作场所和家庭。在世纪后半叶，风险、责任和问责问题在社会、科学、法律的和监管背景下发展和共同演变，将新出现的对辐射的关注与日益紧迫的关注联系起来，重点是开发量化风险和传达这些发现的方法。本研究提供了对决策和冲突的多个字面和比喻场所的新理解：从工作场所到私有财产;从作为劳动者的公民到家庭公民;从穷人和被剥夺公民权的中产阶级房主;从个人决策到群体政治;从健康到虚弱;从非正式到正式的风险评估。这个项目的更广泛的影响超出了20世纪美国科学的历史，包括环境史，劳工史，冷战史，公共卫生和医学史，以及STS。此外，贝尔斯的论文将告知风险评估和风险沟通，谁可以通过了解他们的领域的前身，历史背景和早期组织获得新的见解当前的从业者。最后，风险评估的分析历史对更广泛的公众具有价值，正是因为风险问题，因为它已经被量化，被专家和非专家所感知和讨论，是当今美国的主要关注点。

This dissertation research proposal is for support of a series of in-depth, structured interviews with key figures in the early professionalization of risk assessment. These oral histories will be a crucial basis for two chapters of Ellen Bales's dissertation on the founding of risk assessment as a formal, professional field in the United States between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. The award will permit Bales to interview ten central actors, substantiating the primary goal of the dissertation: to examine risk assessment's embattled status as a science, the broader social and cultural context that influenced its codification and its role as informant for policies concerning science and technology, with a particular focus on radiation protection.The intellectual merit of this dissertation lies in its analysis of the historical roots of formal risk assessment, a professionalization account that is framed by a fresh look at two case studies of the risks posed by radon, a radiation threat in both the workplace and the home. Over the latter half of the 20th century, questions of risk, responsibility, and accountability developed and co-evolved in social, scientific, legal, and regulatory contexts, linking newly-prominent concerns about radiation to an increasingly urgent focus on developing methods for quantifying risks and communicating those findings. This examination provides a new understanding of multiple literal and figurative sites of decision-making and conflict: from the workplace to private property; from citizens as laborers to citizens at home; from the poor and disenfranchised to the middle-class homeowner; from individual decision-making to group politics; from health to debility; from informal to formal risk assessment.The broader impact of this project extends beyond the history of 20th-century American science to include environmental history, labor history, Cold War history, history of public health and medicine, and STS. Furthermore, Bales's dissertation will inform current practitioners of risk assessment and risk communication, who can gain new insight through understanding their field's antecedents, historical context, and early organization. Finally, an analytical history of risk assessment has value to a wider public precisely because the problematic of risk, as it has been quantified and perceived and discussed both by experts and non-experts, is a major preoccupation in the United States today.