Toxic Tort Legal Glossary: R

Radioactive Waste: Any waste that emits energy as rays, waves, or streams of energetic particles. Radioactive materials are often mixed with hazardous waste, usually from nuclear reactors, research institutions, or hospitals.

Radon: A colorless, naturally occurring gas formed by radioactive decay of radium atoms. Radon accumulating in basements and other areas of buildings without proper ventilation has been identified as a leading cause of lung cancer.

Recycle: Minimizing waste generation by recovering and reprocessing waste into usable products that might otherwise become waste (e.g., recycling of aluminum cans, paper, and bottles, etc.).

Red Tide: A proliferation of a marine plankton toxic and often fatal to fish, perhaps stimulated by the addition of nutrients. A tide can be red, green, or brown, depending on the coloration of the plankton.

Release: Any spilling, leaking, pumping, pouring, emitting, emptying, discharging, injecting, escaping, leaching, dumping, or disposing into the environment of a hazardous or toxic chemical or extremely hazardous substance.

Remediation: Cleanup or other methods used to remove or contain a toxic spill or hazardous materials from a Superfund site

Risk Assessment: A qualitative or quantitative evaluation of the environmental and/or health risk resulting from exposure to a chemical or physical agent (pollutant); combines exposure assessment results with toxicity assessment results to estimate risk.

Risk Factor: Something that increases the likelihood of cancer.

Risk Management: Decisions about whether an assessed risk is sufficiently high to present a public health concern and about the appropriate means for control of a risk judged to be significant. The process of evaluating and selecting alternative regulatory and non-regulatory responses to risk. The selection process necessarily requires the consideration of legal, economic, and behavioral factors.

Risk: A measure of the probability that damage to life, health, property, and/or the environment will occur as a result of a given hazard.

Route of Exposure: The avenue by which a chemical comes into contact with an organism (e.g., inhalation, ingestion, dermal contact, injection).