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The willingness to view risk as part of daily life has vanished. A risk-averse mindset among environmental regulators engenders confusion between the ethics of intention and the ethics of consequence, leading to the elevation of the precautionary principle with unintended and often unfortunate outcomes. Environmental risk assessment is conservative, but the actual level of conservatism cannot be determined. High-end exposure assumptions and current toxicity criteria from the USEPA, based on linear extrapolation for carcinogens and default uncertainty factors for systemic toxicants, obscure the degree of conservatism in risk assessments. Ideally, one could choose a percentile of the target population to include within environmental standards, but this choice is complicated by the food, pharmaceutical and advertising industries, whose activities, inadvertent or not, often promote maladaptive and unhealthy lifestyle choices. There has lately been much discussion about background exposures and disease processes and their potential to increase the risk from environmental chemicals. Should these background exposures or disease processes, especially those associated with maladaptive individual choices, be included as part of a regulatory risk evaluation? A significant ethical question is whether environmental regulation should protect those pursuing a self-destructive lifestyle that may add to or synergize with otherwise innocuous environmental exposures. Choosing a target percentile of protection would provide an increased level of transparency and the flexibility to choose a higher or lower percentile if such a choice is warranted. Transparency and flexibility will lead to more responsive environmental regulation that balances protection of public health and the stewardship of societal resources. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on the phenomenon of hormesis (i.e., low-dose stimulatory effects caused by normally inhibitory or toxic substances) has recently provoked a good deal of debate. Formal mechanisms for deliberation and public participation are increasingly popular strategies for responding to controversial decisions in environmental policy, but they have been used only to a limited extent in response to scientific research itself. This commentary introduces natural scientists to some of the social scientific literature on these issues and argues for the importance of "diagnosing" whether controversial areas of policy relevant research would benefit from some form of deliberation. It provides a tentative diagnosis in the case of hormesis research, recommending a varied deliberative approach. There are many reasons to pursue broadly based deliberation in response to hormesis, including the potential to promote more productive research projects, alleviate public distrust, and prevent bias. Deliberative proceedings in this case should address judgments associated with at least four activities: (1) choosing projects and designing studies, (2) developing terminology, (3) interpreting and evaluating studies, and (4) applying research results to public policy. Although an advisory group composed primarily of experts might provide an adequate starting point, more intensive deliberative processes would be valuable before developing major changes to regulatory policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can empirical evidence of adverse effects from exposure to noxious agents, which is often incomplete and uncertain, be used most appropriately to protect human health? We examine several important questions on the best uses of empirical evidence in regulatory risk management decision-making raised by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s science-policy concerning uncertainty and variability in human health risk assessment. In our view, the US EPA (and other agencies that have adopted similar views of risk management) can often improve decision-making by decreasing reliance on default values and assumptions, particularly when causation is uncertain. This can be achieved by more fully exploiting decision-theoretic methods and criteria that explicitly account for uncertain, possibly conflicting scientific beliefs and that can be fully studied by advocates and adversaries of a policy choice, in administrative decision-making involving risk assessment. The substitution of decision-theoretic frameworks for default assumption-driven policies also allows stakeholder attitudes toward risk to be incorporated into policy debates, so that the public and risk managers can more explicitly identify the roles of risk-aversion or other attitudes toward risk and uncertainty in policy recommendations. Decision theory provides a sound scientific way explicitly to account for new knowledge and its effects on eventual policy choices. Although these improvements can complicate regulatory analyses, simplifying default assumptions can create substantial costs to society and can prematurely cut off consideration of new scientific insights (e.g., possible beneficial health effects from exposure to sufficiently low 'hormetic' doses of some agents). In many cases, the administrative burden of applying decision-analytic methods is likely to be more than offset by improved effectiveness of regulations in achieving desired goals. Because many foreign jurisdictions adopt US EPA reasoning and methods of risk analysis, it may be especially valuable to incorporate decision-theoretic principles that transcend local differences among jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hormesis relates to dose /response (equivalently exposure /response or concentration /response) functions that are characterized by either a U-shaped or an inverted U-shaped pattern. Such phenomena are not unique to health effects. They pose important questions for the design and selection of policy instruments and the measurement of the benefits from intervention. Three examples help to illustrate the potential similarities between hormesis and more familiar environmental policy issues. There is growing recognition in evaluations of land use policy in the U.S. and Europe that agricultural landscape can provide amenities to residential homeowners if they do not live "too close". Odour, dust, pesticide drift and a variety of negative externalities can be experienced.

The article comments regarding the issue on precautionary principle. It is asserted that the precautionary approach is a pervasive aspect of modernity. It pointed out that the acceptance of hormesis model both in toxicology and regulation will be dealing with the issue of authority within science and government and choice of research focus, development, application and justification. It contends that hormesis should be placed in regulation.

Common sense requires that regulation to prevent the adverse effects of exposure to chemicals should when possible preserve the desirable or beneficial effects of exposure to the chemical. Excluding such effects by definition is contrary to good science and common sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the articles published in this issue of Human and Experimental Toxicology. In many discussions on the assessment of toxicological foundations of hormesis, questions have been raised about the possible societal impact of hormesis, especially in the area of environmental regulations. Such discussions have quickly focused on whether and how hormesis could influence the costs of various regulations.