Kozák, Imre Olivér | Hungary

Born in 1977, Imre Olivér Kozák studied Chemical Engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE) from 1995-2001 and gained an MSc with honours in bioengineering (biological process engineering). He is currently a PhD student at the Department of Innovation Management and History of Technology at BUTE, studying the design process of environmental limit values.

Imre's research specifically focuses on the ways in which risk factors can be employed by various actors in the design process of environmental limit values, in particular when regulation has to be founded on a shaky basis of scientific knowledge. As part of his doctoral project he has been a visiting researcher at Florida Tech in 2002, and from November 2003 to June 2004 will be conducting research as a visiting fellow at IAS-STS.

Project at IAS-STS:  Improvement of the design process of environmental limit values through the integration of risk factors

The aim of the project includes revealing the importance of risk factors in the use of limit values in environmental legislation through a comparative historical approach. To reach this scope, the project focuses on the analysis of the history of limit value formation, with special attention for the possible role of risk factors.

The main questions will cover the direct or indirect role of the public and of industry in influencing the levels of limit values, and a comparison of the governmental backgrounds in the area of limit values in Austria, Hungary and the EU. The analysis of case studies will deal with the situations where "good" or "wrong" limit values turned into "good" or "wrong" impact on industrial activity, hence on the environment. Having sound research expertise in the area of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), I wish to focus on limit values for these particularly important carcinogenic pollutants through case studies.

Later on, based on the conclusion to suggest new ways for the design of limit values; determining how and where expert opinion and public participation could be integrated into classical scientific reasoning; including the role to ascribe to public participation in framing the quantitative calculations. Finally, the project involves studying the problem of real life application of these standards in local situations.

Selected Publications

Kozák I. O. (2002): Risk Policy in the Design of Environmental Limit Values. Summer Academy on Technology Studies, Technology and the Public. Deutschlandsberg, July 7-12 2002

Kozák I. O. (2002): A határértékek szerepe a modern környezeti szabályozásban (in Hungarian, "The Role of Limit Values in Modern Environmental Regulation"). Muhelytanulmányok, Budapest, Vol. 1. 107-113

Kozák I. O. (2002): A közvélemény szerepe a környezetvédelmi határértékek alakításában. (in Hungarian, "The role of public participation in the design of environmental limit values) National Meeting on History of Technology of Comitte of History of Science and Technology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2002

Kozák I. O., Kozák M., Fekete J., Sharma K. V. (2003): Concentration of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Moss (Hypnum cupressiforme) from Hungary. J. of. Env. Sci. and Health Part A, Vol. A38, No. 11, pp. 2613-2619