The Hazard of Forgetting about Risk

Extract

Professor Lofstedt's article makes an important contribution to the growing scholarship on risk regulation. He focuses on one of Europe's key challenges – how to ensure that European law and regulation is “smart” in the sense that it strikes the right balance between a high level of protection for human health and the environment while not being overly burdensome and enabling us to maintain our competitiveness and standard of living. The EU has taken a leading global role in chemicals regulation, which is welcome. However, as Professor Lofstedt's study clearly illustrates, much work remains to be done to ensure transparency, legal certainty, and sound science-based regulatory outcomes.

The debate around risk versus hazard is an important one. As Professor Lofstedt notes, these are not contradictory concepts, but rather build on each other. Hazard and the intrinsic capacity of a substance to cause harm is the starting point. The debate then centers on to what extent a risk assessment (taking actual or potential exposure into account) should be made before the uses of the substance in question are regulated. Put simply, if there is no exposure, there will be no risk, even when the hazard is high. There are many examples of substances that have known intrinsic hazards, but that pose virtually no risk to human health given how and in what quantities they are used. Ordinary table salt is a well-known example.