Risk frameworks and biomonitoring: Distributed regulation of synthetic chemicals in humans

Environmental History

Volumn 13, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 684-694

  Daemmrich, Arthur ^a  

^a HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BIOMONITORING; CHEMICAL POLLUTANT; POLLUTION EXPOSURE; REGULATORY FRAMEWORK; RISK ASSESSMENT; TOXICOLOGY;

EID: 57149112191     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Chauncey Starr, "Social Benefit versus Technological Risk: What is Our Society Willing to Pay for Safety?" Science 165 (1969): 1232-38;
2. Baruch Fischoff et al., "How Safe is Safe Enough? A Psychometric Study of Attitudes toward Technological Risks and Benefits," Policy Sciences 9 (1978): 127-52.
3. Environmental NGOs popularized the term "body burden" to signal a total synthetic chemical load borne by humans. See: www.chemicalbodyburden.org.
4. Scholars have long noted the influence of values, ethics, and political culture on regulatory definitions of risk. See: Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982);
5. Ronald Brickman et al., Controlling Chemicals: The Politics of Regulation in Europe and the United States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 187-217;
6. Sheila Jasanoff, Risk Management and Political Culture (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1986), 25-32, 69-77.
7. John K. Smith, "Turning Silk Purses into Sows' Ears: Environmental History and the Chemical Industry," Enterprise and Society 1 (2000): 785-812.
8. Adeline Levine, Love Canal: Science, Politics, and People (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1982);
9. Marc Landy et al., The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
10. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 15-51.
11. H.R. Rep. No. 94-1241, at 4.
12. www.epa.gov/hpv/index.htm.
13. Library of Congress, Environment and Natural Resources Policy Division, Legislative History of the Toxic Substances Control Act (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976).
14. McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP, TSCA Handbook, 4th Ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 7-12;
15. Theo Colborn et al., Our Stolen Future (New York: Penguin, 1997), 210-30.
16. This issue came to the fore in the environmental justice movement of the 1990s: see Phil Brown, Toxic Exposures: Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007);
17. and Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990).
18. Ken Sexton et al., "Human Biomonitoring of Environmental Chemicals," American Scientist 92 (2004): 38-45;
19. Alastair Iles, "Identifying Environmental Health Risks in Consumer Products: Non-Governmental Organizations and Civic Epistemology," Public Understanding of Science 16 (2007): 371-91.
20. Christian Warren, Brush With Death: A Social History of Lead Poisoning (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000);
21. Gerald Markovitz and David Rosner, Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
22. Michael Egan, Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007).
23. Joseph Badaracco, Loading the Dice: A Five-Country Study of Vinyl Chloride Regulation (Boston: HBS Press, 1985), 5-18.
24. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, First National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (Atlanta: CDC, 2001).
25. For representative examples, see Peter Waldman, "Common Industrial Chemicals in Tiny Doses Raise Health Issue," Wall Street Journal (25 July 2005): A1, A12;
26. and David Duncan, "Pollution Within," National Geographic (October 2006): 116-43.
27. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Second National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (Atlanta: CDC, 2004).
28. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. (Atlanta: CDC, 2005).
29. CDC, Third National Report, Executive Summary, 2.
30. The site subsequently was taken down, although the EWG has extensive information at www.ewg.org/sites/humantoxome.
31. Environmental Working Group, "Across Generations" (May 10, 2006), 2.
32. See also Jane Houlihan et al., Body Burden: The Pollution in Newborns (Washington, DC: EWG, 2005).
33. World Wildlife Fund, Bad Blood? A Survey of Chemicals in the Blood of European Ministers (Brussels: WWF, 2004).
34. "EU Citizens are Walking Chemical Cocktails," EUobserver.com (August 6, 2003).
35. See: www.chemicalbodyburden.org.
36. Kristin Schafer et al., Chemical Trespass: Chemicals in Our Bodies and Corporate Responsibility (San Francisco: Pesticide Action Network, 2004).
37. See: Inside Bay Area, "A Body's Burden: Our Chemical Legacy," extras.inside bayarea.com/bodyburden/bodyburden.html.
38. http://assets.panda.org/custom/games/toxicblaster.
39. Ian Austen, "Bottle Maker to Stop Using Plastic Linked to Health Concerns," New York Times online (18 April 2008).
40. Sheila Jasanoff, "NGOs and the Environment: From Knowledge to Action," Third World Quarterly 18 (1997): 579-94;
41. Debora Spar, and Lane LaMure, "The Power of Activism: Assessing the Impact of NGOs on Global Business," California Management Review 45 (2003): 78-101.