There was no history of dealing with environmental problems as a serious health threat before smog showed up on the radar screens of California public officials. "New institutions had to develop to confront a problem that in essence didn’t exist before," explains Joshua Dunsby, a doctoral student in Sociology at UC San Diego. Dunsby has been awarded a TSR&TP graduate fellowship to study the history of managing environmental risks. Dunsby’s research will look at how the culture – the beliefs and practices – of dealing with an environmental health problem developed through a historical investigation of air pollution politics in California from WWII to the mid-1970s, focusing on the smog problem. He explains, "It’s a contribution that will hopefully be an occasion for people to reflect on many taken for granted assumptions about environmental health decision-making."

According to Dunsby, "We are currently in a time when people are revisiting the issue of environmental risk and now we’re coming to question some of the methods we use for assessing risk."

"It doesn’t seem to surprise people working in the risk assessment arena that the same issues keep popping up over and over, and no one seems to be able to explain why", says Dunsby. Many regulations handed down on the basis of risk assessments are under fire. Ozone standards are a good example of the recurring controversy. We are basing our regulations on risk assessments that may or may not be accurate and are continually revised. Examining how the process developed may improve the way risk assessments are conducted and help with future decision-making when the science is uncertain.