Cultural impact assessments and environmental remediation decisionmaking

The United States Department of Energy must determine how risks are to be assessed, managed, and communicated at its many sites with radiological and chemical contamination. One often overlooked component of risk and impact assessments is the impact of environmental remedial actions on cultural groups proximate to contaminated sites. Cultural impact assessments should be undertaken because of both the importance of one's culture to one's quality of life and the role they could play in augmenting sound human health risk assessments. This paper presents a basis for why cultural impact assessments should be considered and a model for how they might be undertaken.