Environmental risk.

Ecological risk is a probabilistic characteristic of the threat that arises both for the environment and for the person himself, in the case of various anthropogenic influences or other events and phenomena. Any ecotoxicant is an undoubted stressor. An environmental risk assessment provides that a stressor is any impact: chemical, mechanical or field, which causes any change in ecological and biological systems, both negative and positive.

The concept of environmental risk assessment includes two elements: Risk Assesment, or risk assessment, and Risk Management, or risk management. A risk assessment is a scientific analysis of the origin, identification and identification of the level of risk in a given situation. The term "environmental risk" refers to the sources of danger that threaten a particular ecological system or the process that it carries. Ecological indicators of damage are the destruction of biota, harmful, possibly even irreversible, impact on ecological systems, deterioration of the state of the environment, which is associated with an increase in its pollution, an increase in the occurrence of various specific diseases, the death of large natural objects, for example, lakes, seas, rivers, forests and so on.

Environmental risk can be managed. For this purpose, it is necessary to analyze the very risk situation in the beginning, develop and justify a management decision in the form of a law or a normative act that will be aimed at reducing the risk or finding ways to reduce it.

The theory of environmental risk forms the principles that characterize the attitude of the human community to the need to ensure trouble-free operation of technical facilities as sources of increased environmental danger:

1) Zero environmental risk: this principle reflects the people's confidence in the impossibility of causing damage to this object.

2) Consecutive approach to complete and absolute safety or zero risk: it involves conducting research in this direction on the application of technologies that reduce this risk.

3) Minimum environmental risk: the level of danger that can be maximally achieved, based on the principle of justification of any costs for protecting human security.

4) Balanced risk. According to this principle, any natural hazards and anthropogenic influences are taken into account, the risk level of each of the events and conditions under which a person can be endangered.

5) Acceptable risk. This principle is based on an analysis of the cost-risk ratio, or benefit and risk, or costs and benefits. This concept is based on the assumption that it is completely or economically unprofitable to exclude risk, or it is impracticable, and therefore it is necessary to establish a rational level of safety, in which the costs for reducing the likelihood of risk and the amount of damage possible in the event of an emergency situation are optimized .

The first stage in assessing the likely risk is the identification of a real hazard for both humans and the environment. At this stage, an important role is played by scientific research. Hazard identification means the search for its signal and its isolation from the general background.

At the second stage, the exposure is assessed, that is, identifying which way, through what medium, in what quantity, when and how long the exposure will be.

The third is the evaluation of the dependence of the effect on the dose-the determination of the quantitative regularity that relates the received dose of a harmful substance to the likelihood of development of adverse effects on health.

And the fourth is the result of all the previous ones, the characteristic of the risk. It includes an assessment of all identified and possible adverse effects on human health.