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Managing Children's Risks: It Takes a Commitment
By Kimberley Thompson and Age Related Differences in Susceptibility to Carcinogenesis
By Dale Hattis 4:05-4:30 PM Social gathering, light snacks Conference Room, CDM RSVP Required to Korin Scheible at CDM, ScheibleKA@cdm.com by noon the day of the meeting to facilitate security sign in. |
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Managing Children's Risks: It Takes a Commitment
Kimberley Thompson Summary: This presentation will provide an overview of the risks
to children and an introduction to the Kids Risk Project. The talk will
focus on the issues of improving the information available to assess the
risks to kids and the importance of using good information to put children's
risks into context. The talk will cover the need to characterize the risks
to children broadly, and to consider the definitions used and their implications
for managing children's risks overall. The talk will emphasize the importance
of developing the field of pediatric risk analysis and ensuring that research
on children's risks leads to better choices and a larger commitment to
improving the lives of children.
Biography: Dr. Kimberly Thompson is Associate Professor of Risk
Analysis and Decision Science at the Harvard School of Public Health and
Children’s Hospital Boston (Harvard Medical School). She created
and directs the Kids Risk Project at Harvard and co-founded the Center
on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston. Dr. Thompson
is a nationally and internationally known expert on children’s risks
and on probabilistic risk analysis. Her research interests and teaching
focus on the issues related to developing and applying quantitative methods
for risk assessment and risk management, and consideration of the public
policy implications associated with including uncertainty and variability
in risk characterization. Drawing on a diverse background, she seeks to
effectively integrate technological, social, political, legal, and economic
issues into risk analyses that inform public policy and improve decision
making in what she calls the Age of Risk Management (www.aorm.com).
Dr. Thompson earned her Doctor of Science in Environmental Health at Harvard
and Bachelor and Master of Science Degrees in Chemical Engineering from
M.I.T. A frequent speaker, and currently a Society for Risk Analysis/Sigma
Xi Distinguished Lecturer, she is author of Risk In Perspective: Insight
and Humor in the Age of Risk Management (AORM, 2003) and Overkill (with
Debra Bruce, Rodale, 2002), and her work has been widely covered in popular
media. Age Related Differences in Susceptibility to Carcinogenesis
By Dale Hattis
Summary: The objective of our project is to systematically assemble
and analyze available animal and human data bearing on the differences
in sensitivity to carcinogenesis as a function of age in fetal, neonatal
and adult life stages to facilitate quantitative use of these data in
quantitative risk assessments. This seminar reports our analysis of the
available data for carcinogenesis in mice and rats of different ages,
and application of the results for risk analyses for full lifetime exposures.
We use likelihood methods to avoid excluding cases where no tumors were
observed in either adult or other groups. We express dosage for animals
of different weights on a metabolically consistent basis (either concentration
in air or food, or per unit body weight to the three quarters power).
Finally we use a system of dummy variables to represent the fraction of
time that the animals were exposed during fetal, pre-weaning, and weaning-60
day postnatal periods. The results indicate appreciable differences in
relative pup/adult sensitivity between mutagenic vs. putative non-mutagenic
carcinogens, and between male vs. female animals. Overall, the arithmetic
mean expected-value results suggest that pre-adult exposures to mutagenic
carcinogens pose lifetime cancer risks that are comparable to risks from
much longer exposures during adulthood.
Biography: Dale Hattis is Research Professor with the Center for Technology, Environment and Development (CENTED) of the George Perkins Marsh Institute at Clark University. He has worked for more than 25 years on the development and application of methodology to assess the health, ecological, and economic impacts of regulatory actions, and has made a special contribution in developing implications of inter-individual variability for risk assessments for both cancer and non-cancer endpoints. He has a particular goal of bridging the gap between experimental scientists and statistical researchers by describing the causal mechanisms that lead to biological damage. Dale is one of the founders of the New England Section of SRA (and the Boston Risk Assessment Group). He has served as a Councilor for the SRA, on National Academy of Science Panels and on Science Review Boards for the EPA. |
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