Gordon

You are right that there is a very fundamental difference between
precautionary approaches in the USA and most of the rest of the world,
including your northern and southern neighbours. I invite you to study
http://www.kslaw.com/library/pdf/reachpaper.pdf carefully to obtain a
better understanding of the legal semantics.

However, even in the USA, you are not consistent, in that the FDA
applies the precautionary principle à la nouvelle européenne to new
pharmaceutical products.

However, I try to be more pragmatic in my approach. I gave the example
of nPB because it is a substance that I have been working with for a
number of years and I tried hard, unsuccessfully, to get it included in
the Montreal Protocol. I did get the Parties to the Protocol to issue
precautionary warnings. Why did I target this substance? Because it is
an ozone depleter (of admittedly unknown potential) and because applying
knowledge of analogue substances shows that there is a strong risk of
toxicity which would make it unsuitable for unrestricted use in
industry. At about the same time (actually a year earlier), and for the
same reasons, I also targeted chlorobromomethane. This was introduced
into the Protocol and thus banned in 1999. It may be coincidence, the
four major countries that produce nPB just happen to be the most
vociferous in their opposition to any negative restrictions but only the
least important of these produced the CBM. The EU have finally
announced, a few weeks ago, they may introduce a proposal for an
amendment to phase out nPB next year.

Without conducting animal tests (to which I'm somewhat opposed where it
is not 100% necessary), it is possible to judge an approximation of the
toxicity of a new substance by computer modelling the metabolic
processes and judging the toxicity of the metabolites, as well as by
simple analogy, the same as modelling may judge its environmental
comportment in the atmosphere, soil and water, to some extent. It is
therefore relatively easy to judge whether the risk be high or low in
well over two-thirds of the cases of new substances, at least
sufficiently to take most of the arbitrariness out of whether the
precautionary principle should be applied or not. As these relatively
new modellings improve, so will the arbitrariness be reduced, perhaps to
the stage when no testing will be required. At the moment, the
confidence level of the results is somewhat less than unity.

However, toxicology of industrial substances is not the be all and end
all of the subject: the epidemiology is just as important and can reveal
things missed by the tox studies. In a totally different sector (and
still under study), the triple vaccine given to babies may possibly
cause autism in a small number of patients. It is known that the three
vaccines, administered separately, have an extremely low rate of
complications, but combined, well, who knows? Epidemiologists are not
sure about the cause and effect relationship, mainly because of the
possibility of confounding factors, but this possibility would never
even have come to light without epidemiological statistics. In view of
the doubt and the seriousness of the potential complications, one would
think that it may be better to give the three vaccines separately,
applying the precautionary principle. Some health authorities have
accepted this, others have refused. Why?

Finally, I should say that I'm 100% opposed to REACH. This is not a
pragmatic approach to an existing problem, but a massive bulldozer
trying to bury the problem under a bureacratic mountain, so that it can
never see the light of day. Any law which requires 2,000 pages to
explain it is so inept as to be not worth the trees chopped down to
print it (where is your environmentalism now?). If you subscribe to the
journal Circuit World, you will see an article written by your
not-so-humble servant on this very matter in the issue due out on 23
January 2004, entitled 'REACH for your gun'. In it, I argue that the
European printed circuit fabrication industry will be stifled out of
existence if REACH were to be promulgated as proposed in the draft.
After the consultation period, the EU counted a record 6,400-odd
contributions, the majority negative. Yet very few of these came from
the electronics industry, a major user of chemicals, and I found none
from the printed circuit industry (I'm not sure of the complete lack, as
many contributions were in languages unintelligible to myself, and I may
just have missed one or two in the mass of comments). For the anecdote,
a manufacturer of a popular adhesive for attaching SMDs mentioned that
the new proposed safety sheets on some products may need to be 500 pages
long!

So my viewpoint is summarised: reasonable but pragmatic safety without
bureaucracy.

Best regards,

Brian

Davy, Gordon wrote:
> Although the initial reference in this forum to the precautionary
> principle related to brominated fire retardants rather than lead, it
> should be clear that the principle?s philosophy is the basis of the RoHS
> and WEEE directives, and hence quite on topic. It is not too extreme to
> say that had the leaders in Europe not bought into the precautionary
> principle, there?d be no such directives, and no need for a leadfree or
> halogenfree forum.
>
> In his latest posting, Brian Ellis says he recommends application of the
> precautionary principle under some conditions but not others. But that
> means he favors using some other principle to decide. As can be inferred
> from the case he makes for restricting n-propyl bromide, the basis he
> uses for making decisions (and convincing others) is actually
> conventional risk assessment: a case-by-case accumulation of facts,
> scientific evaluation of risk, and rational discourse, all of which he
> has proven quite good at. (I hope that it is clear that I am not
> targeting Brian as a person; I?m concerned about his philosophy and his
> influence.)
>
> While I am glad to see that Brian has some reservations about the
> precautionary principle after all, and thinks that its full application
> is inappropriate, I wonder whether he realizes that the basis he
> actually uses is fundamentally, philosophically, different from the
> basis built into the precautionary principle. I would like to suggest
> that to support the precautionary principle in any circumstance is at
> best to miss what it is really about. Like so much coming from the
> activists, its name is misleading, suggesting that its opponents are
> opposed to caution, and therefore to be regarded as ignorant,
> irresponsible, hasty, reckless, greedy, or some other pejorative term.
> You can be cautious and still reject the precautionary principle. Or you
> can be irresponsible and support it.
>
> As its creators themselves have stated, to make a decision based on the
> precautionary principle is to use not risk assessment but risk
> perception. That is, according to the precautionary principle if anyone
> thinks that use of a substance might be harmful, then the people who
> want to use the substance must prove to the perceiver?s satisfaction
> that there is no threat. In practice, this means that any substance for
> which a formal (and expensive) study has not been undertaken is presumed
> guilty, with no room for informed judgment. Since activists reject risk
> assessment as a concept, it may not even be clear what would needed to
> gain approval. When Brian says ?We should not apply the precautionary
> principle to substances we know are safe?, he doesn?t tell say who ?we?
> is, and hence he glosses over the problem.
>
> As I see it, since activists have demonstrated their willingness to
> deceive to promote their agenda, opposition to the use of a substance
> need not even be based on its perceived risk ? opposition on any basis
> will work as long as you can claim risk. To me, supporting the
> precautionary principle looks a lot like handing over veto power to the
> world?s most dogmatic ? or paranoid ? activist. Just imagine what it
> would take to placate the activists who torch SUV?s.
>
> To the activist, despite the claim ?we realize that human activities may
> involve hazards?, the only relevant issue for any given substance is
> whether you have convinced him that its use is non-risky, not the
> consequences (including, as Brian claims, bankrupting the EU) if its use
> were to be prohibited. The activists have already determined that lead
> should be prohibited in electronic products and electronic products kept
> out of landfills, so to them our forum discussions about the amount of
> lead in ground water, or even blood, are irrelevant. Make no mistake:
> it?s the activists who get to decide how their principle is to be
> applied. Brian has not yet explained how he came to believe that it?s
> better for public health to try to restrict what gets incinerated than
> how the incineration is performed.
>
> The precautionary principle is extremism and superstition masquerading
> as prudence. I again call on Brian and others to disavow publicly not
> just the mischief the principle?s application has already wrought, but
> the fraudulent philosophy of the precautionary principle.
>
> Gordon Davy
> Baltimore, MD
> [log in to unmask]
> 410-993-7399
>
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