01377pab a2200157 454500 180718b1999 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Tesh, Sylvia N. Citizen experts in environmental risk 1999 p.39-58 Mar In the last two decades, public administrators have increasingly faced groups of people with opposing views about the risks of exposure to environmental contaminants. Because of a series of intriguing studies on risk perception, the situation is frequently seen, by scholars and administrators alike, as a conflict between experts and citizens, and risk communication guidelines are based on this interpretation. But the citizen-expert dichotomy appears fallacious when it is examined in light of the ways citizens actually participate in environmental policy making. The dichotomy overlooks the fact that citizens express their perception of risk largely through organized citizen groups, and that these groups employ and have access to many experts. This essay uses a mainstream environmental group and a number of grassroots environmental groups to illustrate the point. It concludes that the more important conflict is between experts who find environmental pollution safe and those who find it hazardous. - Reproduced Pollution Policy Sciences 41415 41415 41415 0 0 0 0 IIPA IIPA 2018-07-19 Volume no: 32, Issue no: 1 AR41791 2018-07-19 2018-07-19 AR