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Prometheus: Critical Studies in

Innovation
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subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cpro20

International Journal of Enviromnent

and Pollution. Special Issue: Integrated
Regional Health and Enviromnental Risk
AssessIllent and Safety Management, Vol.
6, Nos. 4–6, 1996, Adrian V. Gheorghe
(Ed.) Geneoa-Aeroport, Suntredand,
Inderscience Enterprises Ltd with
the cooperation and assistance if the
United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organizauon, 1996, pp.
349–784, no price available, ISSN
0957–4352
a
Sharon Beder
a
University of Wollongong , Wallongong, Australia
Published online: 21 Oct 2008.

To cite this article: Sharon Beder (1999) International Journal of Enviromnent and Pollution. Special
Issue: Integrated Regional Health and Enviromnental Risk AssessIllent and Safety Management, Vol.
6, Nos. 4–6, 1996, Adrian V. Gheorghe (Ed.) Geneoa-Aeroport, Suntredand, Inderscience Enterprises
Ltd with the cooperation and assistance if the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organizauon, 1996, pp. 349–784, no price available, ISSN 0957–4352 , Prometheus: Critical Studies in
Innovation, 17:1, 95-96, DOI: 10.1080/08109029908629402

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08109029908629402

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 Book Reviews 95

its operation, I would have been interested to have read more on the political, cultural
and organisational processes which resulted in nurses taking on such a significant role in
the Norwegian medical emergency system. But I guess that's another story .

Notes and R eferences

I. R . W. Dunford, Organisational Behainour. An Organisational Analysis Perspective, Addison-Wesley, Sydney,
Australia , 1992.
2. E. De Poy and L. N. Gitlin, Introduction to Research. Multiple Strategies for Health and Human Services,
Mosby, St Louis, USA, 1994, p. 287.

P. Lynne Johnslone
Charles Sturt Unioersuy
Bathurst, Australia
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International Journal of Enviromnent and Pollution. Special Issue :

Integrated R e gional Health and Enviromnental Risk AssessIllent and Safety
ManageIllent, Vol. 6, Nos. 4-6, 1996
Adrian V. Gheorghe (Ed.)
Geneoa-Aeroport, Suntredand, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd with the cooperation and assistance if the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizauon, 1996, pp. 349-784, no price
available, ISSN 0957-4352

The International Joumal if Environment and Pollution is a UK-based refereed journal. It is

unclear whether it is published bi-monthly as stated on its inside cover, or quarterly as
stated a couple of pages on. The journal's objective is to 'establish an effective channel
of communication between policy makers, government agencies , academic and research
institutions and those conc erned with pollution and oth er environmental issues and
problems'.
The Editor-in-Chief of the Journal is M. A. Dorgham from The Open University,
UK and he is assisted by a European Editor, an American Editor and an internationally
based Editorial Board. Those who referee for the journal or have a paper or commentary
published in it, as well as those nominated by the Editorial Board, are eligible to become
'Environmental and Pollution Associates' who support the Editorial Board through
refereeing and contributing to the journal.
The journal accepts advertising although the only evidence of this was a call for
papers and a conference announcement. The journal also includes, apart from the
refereed papers, letters to the Editor, news and briefs, company profiles, conference
reports and book reviews. This particular issue, however, only included book reviews in
addition to the papers. Very useful indexes to the current volume by title, author and
keywords are also provided.
The journal tends to feature special issues with guest editors and this particular
special issue on 'Integrated Regional Health and Environmental Risk Assessment and
Safety Management' is jointly published with the Polyproject on Risk and Safety of
T echnical Systems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ET H), Zurich.
This issue is longer than normal, over 400 pages and represents Nos. 4-6 in the
volume for 1996. It consists of 25 papers grouped into five sections, following a short
editorial by Adrian Gheorghe from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, which
explains Polyproject's approach to risk assessment.
 96 Book Reviews

The first section is on 'Regional risk assessment: issues and an alytical techniques'; the
second on 'Risk and safety of techni cal systems'; and the third is on 'Issues in risk
managem ent and eme rgency preparedn ess and planning'. There is very little critique of
risk assessment per se and no real ana lysis of gene ral approaches used by risk assessors.
The tar geted audience is clearly those who want to apply the meth ods discussed or are
researching such meth ods.
The approach th roughout is fairly techn ocrati c with th e human dim ension s limited
to those that can be man aged and the social shaping of risk assessme nt, percepti on and
commun ication neglected. A notable excep tion is the pap er on 'Safety culture and its
reflection s in j ob and organiza tiona l design: total safety man agem en t' by Gu dela Grote
and Cuno Kunzler from the Work and Organiz ation al Psychol ogy Unit, Swiss Fed eral
Institut e of T echn ology (ET H). Their pap er uses a socio-technical systems approach and
incorp orat es dimensions such as organisational culture .
O ther pap ers cover integrat ed region al risk assessme nt, health risk assessment,
Downloaded by [University of Tasmania] at 21:46 09 January 2015

environ me ntal risk assessme nt, legal aspec ts of regiona l safety man agement, eco-
management and auditing. Variou s pap ers apply risk assessment to risks ranging from
landfills and toxic chemicals to industrial accidents and biotechn ologies. Experiences in
the U K, Eu rop e, Scandinavia, China and Ku wait are includ ed.
Part 4 includes case studies of risk assessment from various parts of the wor ld-
Zagreb in Croatia, Bombay, the Philippines, Latvia and Eastern Eu rope. These case
studies are generally quit e sho rt and readily acce ssible to less techni cally tr ain ed people
such as poli cy-mak ers and students although a couple go into mu ch more detail and give
plenty of techni cal data. For example, the case study of an integrated risk assessme nt in
Pasig, Lagun a de Bay area, in the Philippines, includes a long tab le with invent ories and
classifications of hazardou s substances and plenty of equa tions and calculations.
The final section on 'Advanced concepts and information technologies' consists of
two pap ers, one by Bent Sorenson, a Danish expe rt who is well known in th e field of risk
assessment, on the role of life-cycle ana lysis in risk assessme nt. The other is by Giampi ero
Beroggi from Delft U niversity of Techno logy and exa mines the role of information and
communication techn ologies in safety man agement.
T his special issue would clearly be very inter esting to researchers and practition ers in
the field of risk assessment and safety man agement but many of the papers would hav e
less appeal outside of this specialist comm unity and one wonders how mu ch other
subscribers of this j ournal on enviro nment and pollution would find of in terest in its 400
plus pages. However, there are some accessible pap ers and even the more specialist
pap ers tend to have more general introduction s.
Judging by the contents for oth er issues of the j ournal in this volume, the mix of
general and specialist papers is typical of the jo urnal. Past pap ers have ranged from those
on 'Scientists an d the bro ader community' (by Australians I. J. Barn es and S. A. W ilson)
and 'E nviro nme nt, technology and corporate responsibility' to those on 'Mesoscale
tran sport of air pollut an ts over Athens: impli cations for air qu ality' and 'Immo bilized
microbial reactor for heavy metal pollution control'. Such a variety is certainly useful for
a library acquisition for universities, gove rnme nt department s and enginee ring or
scientific orga nisations. I am no t sure of the value of person al subsc riptions, altho ugh
clearly people will find specia l issues, such as this one, particularly useful in th eir areas
of expe rtise, part icularly given the wide international coverage of the j ournal.

Sharon Beder
Unioersuy qf Wollongong
Wollongong, Australia