Risk Communication: A Handbook for Communicating Environmental, Safety, and Health Risks

A fully updated edition of the preeminent book on risk communication

For more than a decade, Risk Communication: A Handbook for Communicating Environmental, Safety, and Health Risks has been a trusted compendium of strategies and guidance for effectively conveying risk information. Managers, scientists, engineers, students, communication specialists, healthcare professionals, agency representatives, and consultants in more than twenty countries have benefited from its contemporary, practical advice on what to do and what to avoid for successful risk communication.

Now in its Fourth Edition, the handbook has been updated with expanded coverage of laws, approaches, messages, and technology-based applications such as social media, as well as all-new information on international risk communication.

The handbook guides readers on:

• Understanding Risk Communication—Approaches to communicating risk; laws that mandate risk communication; constraints to effective risk communication; ethical issues; and principles of risk communication
• Planning the Risk Communication Effort—Determine purpose and objectives; analyze your audience; develop your message; determine appropriate methods; set a schedule; and develop a communication plan
• Putting Risk Communication into Action—Information materials; visual representation of risks; face-to-face communication; working with the media; stakeholder participation; and technology-assisted communication
• Evaluating Risk Communication Efforts—Why it's important to evaluate risk communication efforts; types of evaluation; and conducting the evaluation
• Special Cases in Risk Communication—Emergency risk communication and international risk communication

Combining in-depth scientific underpinnings and the greatest breadth of information available, this book makes the topic of risk communication accessible to those who need it most. It is intended as an introduction to the field as well as a refresher and reference book for those communicating environmental, safety, and health risks in government, industry, and academia.

Regina E. Lundgren is an independent consultant with more than twenty years of experience in communicating environmental, safety, and health risks to lay audiences. The recipient of national and international awards, she developed the risk communication plan for the most sophisticated cancer cluster investigation in the nation's history and one of the first state-level public health emergency risk communication plans.

Andrea H. Mcmakin is a marketing and communications specialist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory. For more than twenty years, she's been involved with risk communication programs in national and global security, climate change, health and environmental impacts, worker chemical exposure, and risk perception research. Her work has been published and cited in technical journals, scientific and trade publications, and major regional newspapers.