Initiated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) federal Comparative Risk Project in 1986, comparative risk projects by the end of the twentieth century, there were 46 projects underway. Furthermore, today the priority setting method had gained national attention as many members of Congress, federal professionals, and policy experts agree that environmental protection and public health agencies should, when setting priorities, consider the relative degree of risk their actions will reduce. However, while proponents tout comparative risk as a rational approach to making decisions about priorities, critics among national and grassroots environmental organizations believe that comparative risk ranking can be a "hard" technocratic approach that ignores non-risk factors in decision making, is "undemocratic," and is contrary to pollution prevention or the will of the people.

In the past, risk has not been factored into environmental priority setting and, as remarked by William Ruckelshaus, who twice served as...