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7 Ecology L.Q. 207 (1978-1979)
A Generic View of Toxic Chemicals and Similar Risks

handle is hein.journals/eclawq7 and id is 217 raw text is: Ecology Law Quarterly VOL. 7 1978 No. 2 A Generic View of Toxic Chemicals and Similar Risks Talbot Page* A new type of environmental problem is emerging which differs in nature from the more familiar pollution and resource depletion problems. This type of problem, which may be called environmental risk, ' has rapidly increased in importance over the last few decades and may indeed become the dominant type of environmental problem. Environmental risk problems are exemplified by: the risk of leakage and contamination in the disposal of nuclear wastes; the production of synthetic chemicals which may be toxic, carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic; the risk /of ozone depletion due to fluorocarbon emissions by supersonic transports; and the danger presented by recombinant DNA of the creation and escape of a new disease against which mankind has no natural defense. Society is vulnerable to environmental risk problems for two reasons. First, because environmental risk is not yet adequately recognized as a specific type of problem, its characteristics are not well defined. A problem inadequately defined is difficult to control. Second, the characteristics Copyright © 1978 by Ecology Law Quarterly. * Visiting Associate at the Environmental Quality Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; on leave from Resources for the Future. Ph.D. 1972, Cornell University (econom- ics). The author wishes to thank Paul Portney of RFF and the editors of the Ecology Law Quarterly for their generous contributions in revising and editing. He also benefited from many helpful comments from Walter Spofford, Cliff Russell, and especially Robert Harris. He respectfully acknowledges support from the Rockefeller Foundation and from Resources for the Future. 1. Environmental risk will be defined specifically in terms of nine characteristics discussed infra. Risk has several distinct meanings depending on its usage. In environmen- tal risk, the term draws attention to the potential adverse consequences, for which the underlying probability may be highly uncertain. In this usage one speaks of the risk of cigarette smoking, the risk of war, benefit-risk analysis, but the chance, not risk, of winning the Irish Sweepstakes. See notes 4 and 44 infra for alternate usages of the term risk.

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