Environmental `nasty surprise': implications for intelligent steering of chemical technologies affecting the food supply

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intelligent steering of chemical technologies affecting the food supply</B></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" height=412 colspan=2 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> Jeff Howard, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute* </div> <bR> <div> Evidence that common food contaminants may disrupt the human endocrine system is a prime example of a growing class of environmental "nasty surprises" that pose a profound challenge to democratic policy making. Phenomena such as endocrine disruption, ozone depletion, and acid rain are <I>surprises</I> because they seem to drop out of the blue -- even if it is soon clear that warning signs were long missed, ignored, or misinterpreted -- and reveal major errors in scientific thinking and public policy. They are <I>nasty</I> because they represent potentially enormous health and environmental hazards and because efforts to address them encounter major technological, economic, and political obstacles. Clearly, intelligent public policy and intelligent design of technology should incorporate preventive measures to reduce the frequency with which such phenomena emerge and the severity of the threat they present.</div> <bR> <div> A framework known as Intelligent Trial and Error provides guidelines for needed reforms of chemical technologies affecting the food chain. It requires: wide, early debate about a proposed technology; initial precautions that err on the side of caution; built-in flexibility to facilitate modification when errors are detected; premanufacture testing, pilot projects, and other means of accelerating detection of errors; diverse, multipartisan monitoring; well-funded means of interpreting results of testing and monitoring from diverse perspectives; gradual scale-up as learning occurs; and strong incentives for error correction. How has violation of these guidelines contributed to the emergence of endocrine disruption and other nasty surprises? What light do the guidelines shed on the current conflict between the risk paradigm and the precaution paradigm? How can the guidelines be applied to technologies that are already entrenched? Drawing on my dissertation research, I examine these questions in the context of organochlorine contaminants in the food chain and human tissues.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> * Doctoral Student & USEPA STAR Fellow</div> <div> Dept. of Science and Technology Studies (<FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="http://www.rpi.edu/dept/sts/" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.rpi.edu/dept/sts/"><U><U>http://www.rpi.edu/dept/sts/</U></U></A></FONT>)</div> <div> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 Eighth St., Troy, NY 12180-3590</div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="transparent_risk_assessment.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Transparent risk assessment: the Lifelin"><U>Previous Page</U></A>      <A HREF="effective_expert_testimony.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Providing Effective Expert Testimony and"><U>Next Page</U></A></div> </td> </tr></table><html><body><a href="http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-safeguard-suite.php"><img border="0" src="http://www.zend.com/images/store/safeguard_optimizer_img.gif" align="right"></a><center><h1>Zend Optimizer not installed</h1></center><p>This file was encoded by the <a href="http://www.zend.com/products/zend_guard">Zend Guard</a>. 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