New transparency policies: risk communication's doom?

On both sides of the Atlantic transparency policies have been introduced extensively. Thanks to the Internet, transparency has made its way into our daily lives. We can easily check whether we are moving into an area with high or low crime statistics, whether convicted sex offenders live nearby, whether many or few Adverse Drug Reactions (ADRs) have been reported for the medicine we take. When risk imposers resist the trend-for example, restaurant owners who protest against public safety records-it only seems to prove the case: citizens have a right to access critical information that may improve the quality of their risk decisions, and anything that stands in the way of full disclosure is just a bad excuse.