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Instructions,
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Assessing Risk in the New Millennium Reference: Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. September 1999, 7(6) Recently, the Harvard Center for risk Analysis (HCRA) sponsored a workshop on " The Precautionary Principle," in an effort to refine it or replace it. The precautionary principle (PP) advocates the old adage "better safe than sorry" and applies it to potentially hazardous technologies and chemicals of unknown or poorly understood consequence. To date, this principle has already appears in several international treaties and has been enacted into law by several European countries. PP currently plays a large role in several areas of scientific study; these include debates about the future of genetically engineered foods, nuclear power, synthetic chemicals, wireless communications and greenhouse gases. The forerunner of the PP is attributed to the Swedish Environmental Protection Act of 1969. It was also adopted in the 1992 Maastricht treaty of the European Union. Another example of the application of PP is in the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environmental and Development which states "Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific uncertainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost effective measures to prevent environmental degradation." The PP does not appear directly in US environmental laws, rather it manifests itself in several ways. For example, in risk assessment, the worst case assumptions are often used, and margins of safety are applied to estimated values. However, the PP is by no means implicit or rigorous in our laws and is subject to challenge. PP does appear to be in need of some refinement in certain specific circumstances. For example, in a case where exposure/use creates health benefit as well as risk (i.e., moderate alcohol consumption). Another example occurs in cases where the precautionary action itself may induce uncertain risks (i.e., groundwater pollution caused by oxygenated fuel mandates under the Clean Air Act). Lastly, in cases were improved science is likely to clarify whether an alleged danger exists (i.e., substances that are no longer considered to pose a carcinogenic risk such as saccharin), then further refinement of the PP is necessary. The HCRA workshop on the PP has raised several issues that are scheduled for further exploration in upcoming scientific and policy discussions. The American Association for the Advancement of Science sponsored a full day discussion of the PP at its annual meeting in Washington DC in February, 2000. The American Council in Science and Health has listed the PP as the subject of one of its discussion fora. By: Arlene L. Weiss, MS, DABT, Contributing Editor
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