Criteria for Risk Assessment to the Environmental Licensing in Brazil: A Critical Analysis

In the last years, the Risk Analysis Studies have become part of the process of environmental licensing of installations which are considered hazardous and may cause risks to surrounding communities.

Certainly the adoption of Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) means a great advance in the concerns and actions taken by regulatory and enforcement agencies to control population risks exposed to physical effects and impacted by any accident at hazardous installations, as soon as the approval projects is subject to verification that the risks from operations meet the criteria for risk tolerability, both in Individual Risk and Social Risk.

On the other hand, even with Brazilian constitutional principles which advocates the right of the Union, states and municipalities legislate on environmental issues, you can see the adoption of different positions and criteria for the tolerability by environmental agencies for similar activities, which can not only complicate the understanding by the entrepreneurs and technicians in the area, but also show some inconsistency in taking different levels of risk to communities in the same country.

The aim of this project is to show different criteria for risk tolerability used in Brazil, comparing them in order to submit a reflection on the difficulties and inconsistencies observed in their applications, concluding the need for establishment of standardized criteria, both in methodologies for the preparing of the risk analysis studies, as the criteria for risk tolerability in the context of environmental licensing in Brazil.