Providing Risk Infonnation in Communities: Factors Influencing What Is Heard and Accepted
This paper argues that risk communication is not simply a one way transfer of information. Nor is it a single, discrete event. Rather, risk communication is a process involving interaction over time between senders and receivers of information about a risk. This dynamic view of risk communication, derived from our research on cases of chemical contamination of drinking water, carries important practical implications: If risk communication is interactive, then those who would inform others about risk should take into account the concerns and priorities of the recipients of the information. Our analysis is based on case studies of more than a dozen non metropolitan communities where toxic chemicals had recently been found in groundwater at contaminant levels high enough to require closing of public or private supply wells. Most of the cases selected for study involved contamination by industrial chemicals, with a subset of six cases with the same contaminant trichloroethylene (TCE) We also selected a few cases in which