In 1854, London had a cholera epidemic. Dr. John Snow mapped the locations
of deaths
and found that the majority of them occured within 250 yards of a public
water pump.
Dr. Snow, suspecting that the water from the pump was the source of
the contagion, had
the handle removed, making the pump inoperable. The plague ended. This
was years
before the biological cause of cholera was known. This is an early
example of the use of
the Precautionary Principle to protect the public health.
The Precautionary Principle states: “When an activity raises threats
of harm to human
health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even
if some cause
and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.
In this context the
proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden
of proof.”
Environmental regulations and decisions, particularly those based upon
risk assessment,
have failed to protect both the health of the people and the health
of the biosphere. Risk
assessment is useful when the probability of an outcome (like death
by plane accident) is
known from experience. But risk assessment is frequently applied to
problems of true
uncertainty where probabilities are unknown. Risk assessment then turns
into expensive
guesswork. Guesses tend to promote the economic goals of those seeking
the “safe
exposures” of risk assessment. The release of toxic substances and
the use of over 70,000
chemical compounds (of which only several hundred are regulated worldwide,
and less
than 10% adequately tested for effects on humans and the environment)
continue under
the guise of “safe exposures”. There is no “safe exposure” to a genetically
damaging
toxin. There is no “safe exposure” to a reproductive toxin. A single
exposure may have
lifelong effects. And, science has no way to analyze the effects of
multiple exposures. All
of us, as unpleasant as the realization is, are routinely subjected
to multiple exposures:
pesticides, air pollution, auto exhaust, tobacco smoke, food additives,
etc. Determining
the cumulative effect of these exposures is scientifically impossible.
The effects, however, of the “safe exposure” of risk assessment are
apparent in the
frighteningly increasing rates of learning deficiencies, asthma, cancer,
birth defects,
species extinctions, global climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion,
and worldwide
contamination with toxic substances and nuclear wastes. The economic
costs of stopping
this degradation of our environmental and personal health far outweigh
what would have
been the costs of preventing it in the first place.
The Precautionary Principle has four parts:
1. Communities have a duty and right to take anticipatory action to
prevent harm. This
is no different than practicing preventative medicine: having check-ups
when one
knows that he or she is at risk for some ailment; taking action to
prevent something
bad that could conceivably happen to you.
2. The burden of proof of the harmlessness of a new technology,
process, activity, or
chemical is the responsibility of the proponents, not the public.It
is not the public’s
responsibility to prove that the new technology, process, activity,
or chemical is
dangerous. New chemicals and technologies should be considered dangerous
until
proved otherwise. This shifting of the burden of proof from the public
is already the
case with the pharmaceutical industry, which must prove that a drug
is safe and
publicize any possible side-affects before the drug can be marketed
to the public.
Surely, if new, life-enhancing drugs are subject to the manufacturers’
burden of
proof, should it not be the same for those businesses or activities
which would
expose us to toxic materials which have already been scientifically
proven to be bad
for our health and well-being? Shouldn’t industrial chemicals and processes
be
treated the same way as drugs?
3. Communities have an obligation to discuss and explore “a full range
of alternatives”
to the hazards posed by a new technology, process, activity, or chemical.
This
includes the alternative of doing nothing.
4. Decisions must be open, informed, and democratic, and
include all potentially
affected parties.
As an adjunct to the Precautionary Principle, Robert Costanza, an economist
at the Uni-
versity of Maryland, has developed the “flexible assurance bond”, or
polluter-pays prin-
ciple. This assurance bond is similar to the performance bonds used
in the construction
industry. A construction company puts up an amount of money--the bond--to
insure that
the construction is completed satisfactorily and on time. The bond
money is returned to
the company if obligations are met. If they are not, the company forfeits
all or part of the
bond money, which has been held by a third party.
Applying this concept to the Precautionary Principle, Costanza proposes
that the pro-
ponent of a new technology, process, or chemical would estimate the
worst-case con-
sequences to the health and welfare of the community and would then
post an assurance
bond to cover the current best estimate of the largest potential future
environmental dam-
ages. Held in an interest-bearing escrow account, the bond would be
returned to the pro-
ponent once the proponent had shown that the technology, process, or
chemical was
truly harmless. If harm did occur, the bond money would be used for
clean-up, environ-
mental restoration, restitution for lost wages and health affects to
residents of the com-
munity, etc. (For further information see RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT &
HEALTH
WEEKLY, #510-”Dealing With Uncertainty”; and #657- “The Uses of Scientific
Uncer-
tainty”; published by Environmental Research Foundation, Peter Montague,
editor.
All back issues are available by e-mail. Send e-mail to <info@rachel.org>
with the single
word HELP in the message. The website of the Foundation is <www.rachel.org>.)
To quote Peter Montague of the Environmental Research Foundation
in Annapolis, MD,
“The precautionary principle is not really new. The essence of the
principle is captured in
common-sense aphorisms such as “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure,”
“Better safe than sorry,” and “Look before you leap.” However, environmental
policy in
the U.S. and Europe for the past 70 years has been guided by entirely
different principles
perhaps best reflected in the aphorisms, “Nothing ventured, nothing
gained”, and, “Let
the devil take the hindmost.” “
And, finally, Dr. Sandra Steingraber, author of LIVING DOWNSTREAM-AN
ECOLOGIST LOOKS AT CANCER AND THE ENVIRONMENT-- told the meeting
which drafted the Precautionary Principle in January, 1998 at Wingspread,
the
headquarters of the Johnson Foundation in Racine, Wisconsin, “We all
have a
fundamental human right to enjoy our environment free of fear. Those
who put toxic
chemicals into the environment-whether as wastes or as products-deny
us this human
right. Almost everyone recognizes that such a denial of human rights
is wrong.”
This information on the Precautionary Principle, or the Principle of
Precautionary Action,
has been compiled from publications of the Environmental Research Foundation,
the
Center for Investigative Reporting
, and “Precautionary
Principle” by Joel Tickner in The Networker, The Newsletter of the
Science and
Environmental Health Net, May, 1997- Vol. 2, #4.