Environmentally Induced Illnesses: Ethics, Risk Assessment and Human Rights

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  Jan, 2001  

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by Thomas A. Kerns

ISBN: 0-7864-0827-8

272pp. appendices, bibliography, index $39.95 softcover 2001

The growing epidemics of chemically-induced illnesses in both developed and developing nations have begun to draw the attention of serious researchers around the world, and questions are emerging about how societies will deal with these new epidemics. This book examines ethical issues associated with environmental health risk assessment, and suggests an ethical counterweight -- that of human rights -- to balance out the one-sided risk assessment approach to environmental health decision-making. There are presently no other books that directly address the ethical dimension of managing environmental health and toxics.

The book is divided into four key sections:

Chapter I briefly outlines some of the recent medical literature on adverse health effects of ambient environmental toxicants (effects such as cancer, endocrine dysregulation, chemical sensitivity disorders, neurological deficits from exposure to toxics, etc.), as well as some of the social costs of increased incidence of these disorders.

Chapter II, on ethical principles, a) analyzes the principles underlying the risk assessment approach to environmental health management, b) outlines the two primary approaches to ethical decision-making, c) introduces several relevant historic and recent human rights documents, and d) outlines some of the key ethical principles that ought to guide public policy's management of toxics.

Chapter III offers several specific recommendations about directions that public policy and legislation ought to take with regard to managing toxics. These include recommendations that the principles of informed consent and full disclosure guide public policy, that risk assessment procedures be made fully transparent and public, that product safety standards include separate standards for more vulnerable populations such as infants, children, pregnant women and others, that schools be made as free as possible from all contaminants that could compromise children's health and mental functioning, and other such recommendations.

Chapter IV describes some of the primary obstacles that public health advocates face in their efforts to implement rational public policies for the management of toxics. These obstacles include the powerful counter efforts of the chemical manufacturing corporations and the public relations firms that serve them, the conservative power of medical paradigms, and all the challenges associated with regulating toxics globally.

Appendices presently include relevant human rights documents (such as The Nuremberg Code, the 1994 Declaration of Principles on Human Rights and the Environment, and the 1996 Charter on Industrial Hazards and Human Rights), as well as an example of a well-conceived indoor air quality policy at one institution of higher learning. (See www.mcfarlandpub.com)

COPYRIGHT 2001 The Townsend Letter Group
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning