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

by Regina E. Lundgren (Author), Andrea H. McMakin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"An excellent, thorough book on risk communications for those who communicate about environment, safety, and health risks in the U.S."

Product Description
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. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 342 pages
• Publisher: Battelle Press; 2nd edition (June 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574770551
• ISBN-13: 978-1574770551
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,372,290 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential handbook for those communicating risks, August 30, 2004

By	Book Maven "[e-mail]" (Richland, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Risk Communication: A Handbook For Communicating Environmental, Safety, And Health Risks (Paperback)

Straightforward and well-designed, this 400+ page book tells you how to explain risks to your workers, your stakeholders, and the public effectively. This book gives you the information you need to understand, plan, start, finish, and evaluate your plan to communicate environmental, safety, or health risks.

This guide, which is based on extensive research in the field, is filled with clear visuals and valuable checklists. The examples pulled from the authors' experiences reinforce the messages, often with a touch of humor and grace. For example, never give a presentation during moose hunting season.

A new chapter devoted to communicating in emergenices, such as bioterrorist attacks, provides valuable research and guidelines for building the infrastructure you need NOW, before the emergency, as well as what to do during and after the emergency.

If your job involves communicating risks, you'll want to read this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Risk in Buying THIS Book!, October 19, 2004

By	L. B. Sandy Rock (Bellevue and Richland, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Risk Communication: A Handbook For Communicating Environmental, Safety, And Health Risks (Paperback)

No Risk In Buying This Book!

I've been in the Environmental Risk Communication (RC) field for ten years, medicine for thirty. Often I've wished there was a text or overview of RC that was readable by professional and layperson alike. Little did I know: Regina Lundgren and Andrea McMakin have accomplished this, and the results are a resounding "Wow!" In the Third Edition of "Risk Communication, A Handbook for Communicating Environmental, Safety, and Health Risks" (Regina started with the first one; Andrea joined in for the latter two), they present an orderly, comprehensive, understandable, well-referenced, indexed, annotated and glossaried RC bible for anyone just launching into or well-ensconced in the field.

I've often said that RC can be used not only in the "classic" situations (nicely defined alliteratively in this book as "care, crisis and consensus"), but also in one-on-one domestic and professional settings. This book presents information and advice useful to and usable by just about any reader, as one would expect from a work by two communicators. There are numerous examples, case studies, tables, graphs, charts and margin key points (noted with a diamond) that go along with the very readable text (written at the appropriate level, of course). One moves from cover to cover with the ease of reading a novel, the steps to well-executed RC clearly and comprehensively (yet with remarkable simplicity) delineated. There is a start, a middle and an ending, and one feels as though the next natural step is to go out and try the recipe immediately. (I would not suggest, however, that this is a cookbook, only that it reads as easily and the results could be rewarding.)

I suspect many have and many more will hone their skills as this fine work becomes more familiar to those in the rapidly growing, essential and dynamic field of Risk Communication. There is "no risk in buying this book!" I highly recommend it and urge it on anyone who has dealt or will deal with environmental, safety and health "wicked problems" involving concerned stakeholders. That sigh of relief you hear is you, as you find solutions to---or at least direction toward---the challenges you face.

5.0 out of 5 stars The risk communication "bible", November 11, 2008

By	A. Cargile "Amber C." (Anthem, AZ United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Risk Communication: A Handbook for Communicating Environmental, Safety, and Health Risks (Paperback)

I've worked in communications for more than 18 years and have dealt with environmental and other risk communications off and on for nearly 15 years. I wish someone had handed me this book when I managed public outreach/communications on my first Superfund site in 1994. This is a great, concise, easy-to-reference guide to risk communications...practical and wise without being unapproachably academic. A must for every communicator's library!