What every chemical engineer should know about environmental health hazards.

This paper is the text of a lecture given to an audience composed, for the most part, of students of chemical engineering at a major university. The objective of the paper is to inform such a young, intelligent, and highly technical audience of the basic facts and perceptions--scientific, technical, societal, regulatory, and legal--concerning environmental health hazards. Topics such as toxicity, hazard, and risk--and ways in which risk has been approached and perceived--are discussed as are various public and private efforts to reduce the risks of environmental health hazards. The great uncertainties encountered in this field and seriousness with which it must be taken--including a brief description of possible personal legal liabilities an engineer can face--are stressed. Despite all difficulties, progress has been made in bringing order to a chaotic field and more progress is both needed and possible.

A systematic approach to reducing the risk of industrially related cancer.

One specific concern that has received public attention in recent times is the possible risk of cancer from exposure to industrial chemicals. Although it is not known presently how much cancer is caused by exposure to chemicals from industry, and although the amount is believed by many to be low, responsible corporate actions to reduce the threat of industrially related cancer must be a part of daily business. Even though the personal and emotional impacts of cancer pose a great difficulty in dealing with its risk, if we take a realistic view, it is possible to place the risk into a more manageable perspective and thereby not impede our efforts toward abating it. To that end, we have developed a four stage process for making decisions about cancer risk and actions to reduce it, together with a system for classifying risks as "high," or "low," or "insignificant." The four stages are: hazard identification, hazard evaluation, risk evaluation and risk response. A proper understanding and use of this systematic process by legislative and regulatory bodies could lead to more rational decisions about how to best allocate society's finite resources so as to reduce cancer risks as soon as possible for the largest number of people. Use of this process will also accelerate the handling of the most significant risks first and, until our complex societal mechanisms move to determine what is acceptable risk, it will give us in industry a means for setting priorities and moving in a clearly desirable direction.

Toxicology in business decision making.

More than ever before, toxicology and its sister health sciences and technologies are needed as members of the business team to ensure sound business decision making for both new and existing businesses. Yet the marriage of toxicology and business is an uneasy one since toxicology is both the bringer of bad news and a major resource for the solution of problems. Both business and toxicology have much to learn about each other to make the marriage work and to make full use of toxicology's scientific advice in reaching sound decisions on the safe production, distribution, and handling of a company's products. Toxicology also has a central and difficult role in helping business navigate the turbulent waters of regulation or of potential or actual litigation. From his own experience in organizing a corporate health, safety, and environmental department, the author describes the concepts that must be understood and the marshaling of resources needed to ensure that toxicology can play its full role in business decision making.