Etcyl H. Blair

RISK/BENEFIT ANALYSIS AS VIEWED BY THE CHEMICAL INDUSTRY

For many years, responsible industry has paid attention to concerns about environmental and public health issues. Initially, the emphasis centered on controls for conservation and preservation of the physical environment. In later years, there has been an obvious growth in concern about physical health. Concurrent with the rise of health hazards as a national sociopolitical issue was the creation of legislation which mandates controls having the purpose of protecting society from potential harm associated with many business and industrial operations. In some past instances, clearly identified problems have lent themselves to simple solutions. The birth defects from the use of thalidomide and the drug’s withdrawal from certain global markets is one example. Now, however, we are increasingly confronted with questions pertaining to health risks which do not yield to simplistic solutions. The nature of today’s problems is such that an understanding of a variety of factors and the balancing of these factors are required to arrive at optimal solutions. These factors are seen and weighed from a variety of vantage points, but we can probably agree on a few observations: