Principles for Guiding Action
Basic Information
Organizational ChartsBased on the contribution of participants in the Futures: 2025 Project, EPA has identified seven principles as a guide for selecting actions and fostering innovation.
- Whole System Thinking
- Transparency
- Inclusive Science and Policy
- Pollution and Exposure Prevention
- Cumulative Risk
- Place-Based Tailoring
- Stewardship.
The seven principles for guiding action are a powerful tool. EPA can use the principles to solve problems, seize opportunities, and find greater agreement in areas where disagreements have blocked progress. Over time, these principles can bridge the historical separation between radiation protection and the larger area of environmental protection that EPA oversees.
Whole
System Thinking
Strive to understand issues from a perspective broad enough
to see the larger context from which the issues arise. This
requires multidisciplinary teamwork to look beyond specialties
and organizational stovepipes. It entails striving to understand
longer-term implications of actions and interconnects between
issues.
Transparency
Operate in an open and accountable manner, providing the
public with accurate, understandable information it can
use to make decision and evaluate the performance of organizations.
Assure easy public access to up to date information on the
state of chemicals and radiation in the environment. Avoid
unnecessary secrecy, carefully balancing any risks to security
that open access to information may pose with the social
advantages of greater transparency.
Inclusive
Science and Policy
Maintain a balanced approach that insists on the importance
of sound science but also acknowledges the importance of
inclusiveness. Engage a variety of disciplines, viewpoints
and stakeholders, involve younger scientists, and bring
to the table people with non-mainstream views as long as
their approach is evidence-oriented. Employ alternative
dispute resolution techniques to reach greater agreement
on especially contentious issues.
Pollution
and Exposure Prevention
Adopt practices to reduce at the source the amount of any
hazardous substance or pollutant being released into the
environment. Whenever feasible, eliminate the use of hazardous
materials. Adopt practices that reduce exposures to hazardous
substances and pollutants whose presence cannot be eliminated.
Cumulative
Risk
Devote greater effort to understanding risks posed by cumulative
exposures and by interactions between hazardous agents,
including combined exposures to chemicals and radiation.
Harmonize radiation and chemical regulatory approaches,
based on a careful crosswalk between chemical and radiation
models, parameters, risk calculations, and measurement techniques.
Place-Based
Tailoring
In developing protection strategies, take full advantage
of the human resources and capabilities of local areas.
Where uniform policies are not necessary, avoid "one
size fits all" approaches, tailor policies to local
or regional circumstances and encourage experimentation.
Stewardship
ake responsibility for providing the expertise and resources
to maintain an adequate level of protection to human health
and the environment across generations. Promote product
stewardship as a major strategy in radiation and environmental
protection.