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Part A - Lessons from health hazards
Last modified
: Feb 04, 2013 02:02 PM
Topics:
Environment and health
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Part A commences with an analysis of 'false positives' showing that these are few and far between as compared to false negatives and that carefully designed precautionary actions can stimulate innovation, even if the risk turns out not to be real or as serious as initially feared.
The remaining nine chapters address false negatives — lead in petrol, perchlorethylene contaminated water, Minamata disease, occupational beryllium disease, environmental tobacco smoke, vinyl chloride, dibromochloropropane (DBCP), Bisphenol A and dichlorodiphenyltrichlorethane (DDT) — from which three common themes emerge: there was more than sufficient evidence for much earlier action; slow and sometimes obstructive behaviour by businesses whose products endangered workers, the public and the environment; and the value of independent scientific research and risk assessments.
Part A - Lessons from health hazards contains the following chapters:
- The precautionary principle and false alarms
Steffen Foss Hansen and Joel A. Tickner - Lead in petrol 'makes the mind give way'
Herbert Needleman and David Gee - Too much to swallow: PCE contamination of mains water
David Ozonoff - Minamata disease: a challenge for democracy and justice
Takashi Yorifuji, Toshihide Tsuda and Masazumi Harada - Beryllium's 'public relations problem'
David Michaels and Celeste Monforton - Tobacco industry manipulation of research
Lisa A. Bero - Vinyl chloride: a saga of secrecy
Morando Soffritti, Jennifer Beth Sass, Barry Castleman and David Gee - The pesticide DBCP and male infertility
Eula Bingham and Celeste Monforton - Bisphenol A: contested science, divergent safety evaluations
Andreas Gies and Ana M. Soto - DDT: fifty years since Silent Spring
Henk Bouwman, Riana Bornman, Henk van den Berg and Henrik Kylin
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