The 1989 Annual Meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis dramatically demonstrated one of the most important reasons for having the Society - to bring together people with highly diverse backgrounds and disciplines to assess the common problems of societal and individual risks. The physical scientists emphasized the analytical tools for assessing environmental effects and for modeling risks from engineered systems and other human activities. The health scientists presented numerous methods of analyzing health effects, including the subject of dose-response relationships, especially at low exposure levels - never an easy analysis. The social and political scientists concentrated on issues of risk perception, communication, acceptability, and human