Decision making for pesticide registration was discussed from a point of view of minor crops problem. Agricultural Chemicals Regulation Law was revised in 2002, and the penal regulation to the user of unregistered pesticides was introduced. Then, the problem that there was no registered pesticide for minor clops such as Wasabi occurred. This minor crops problem was caused by that pesticide manufacturers were not able to recover the costs of several tests required for registration due to the small market of minor crops pesticides. In this case, progress in risk assessment was insufficient to solve the problem, because cost of pesticide registration caused the problem. Therefore, assessment of health risk as well as socio-economic effect was thought to be essential for better decision-making.

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Decision making for risk management of brominated flame retardants, DecaBDE, was discussed. There seemed to be two type of gaps 1) the gap between the conclusion of risk assessment and consequence of RoHS Directive, 2) the one between the intention of RoHS Directive and behavior of manufactures responding to the directive. Although, in 2002, EU risk assessment of DecaBDE had not found any reason why DecaBDE had to be regulated, manufactures of electrical and electronics did not stop replacement of DecaBDE with alternative substances. The reason why this gap occurred was that risk assessment was set aside in the process of constructing RoHS Directive. At the same time, there was the second gap in the ideal of RoHS Directive and response of manufactures because there seemed to be unexpected risk and extra social cost.

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In the 1990s, the so-called ‘sick house syndrome’ became an area of public concern. Consequently, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan established Indoor Air Guidelines for 13 compounds as a preventive measure against sick house syndrome. In recent years, lower concentrations of the 13 chemicals in newly built houses diminished the health risk from those chemicals. As a result, instead of the regulated chemicals, unregulated chemicals such as methylcyclohexane, dichloromethane and acetone became common in building materials. These chemicals have also been found to cause sick house syndrome. Thus, in addition to the regulation of individual chemicals, it is now believed that it is necessary to minimize the total amount of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in order to diminish the health risk from indoor air chemicals.

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The term of ‘Uncertainty’ in risk analysis has multiple meanings. Some literature has classified the concepts of uncertainty to construct an available taxonomy of uncertainty in risk analysis, but it is not yet accomplished.
The purpose of this paper is to restate the concepts of ‘Uncertainty’ used in risk analysis. This research comprehensively reviewed previous papers and compared the meaning of the uncertainty term and the dimensions used in uncertainty classification. As a result, some viewpoints and dimensions are extracted. It suggests the following five viewpoints. (i) ‘States of knowledge’ have three dimentions: risk, ambiguity, and ignorance. (ii)‘Types of uncertainty’ have three dimentions : quantity, model, and linguistic uncertainty. (iii) ‘Sources of uncertainty’ have two dimentions: variability and lack of knowledge. (iv) ‘The border of ignorance’ has two dimentions: areas of knowledge and areas of ignorance. And (v) ‘disagreement’ has two dimentions:individual uncertainty and social uncertainty.

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It is important to infer and respect others' values and attitudes for fruitful communication. This paper examines how experts and lay people infer others' risk perception. According to the 2009 questionnaire survey for academic professionals and the general public, professionals estimate that there is a larger difference in risk perception of the technology that they study between themselves and lay people than the general public does. The professionals who hold this feeling perceive the risk of technology as being lower and estimate lay people' s risk perception to be higher. They also focus on positive more than negative aspects of the technology, evaluate its benefits, and tend to presume that negative media coverage greatly affects public perception.

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It is expected that PNECs of aquatic organisms and STP (Sewage Treatment Plant) in REACH dossiers were more accurate than those in the existing chemical assessment documents because the ecological risk assessment in REACH legislation would be carried out after data gap was filled. However, many PNECs for freshwater aquatic organisms in the published 26 REACH dossiers were diverted from the short-term testing, or were derived from the existing documents. Some PNECs of STP were derived from the newly conducted tests. As a result, there was rarely difference between the ecological risk assessment in REACH and in the existing chemical assessment documents.

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