Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:19:32.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How Chemicals Are Regulated in the European Union: A Commentary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Dan Jørgensen
Dan Jørgensen*
Affiliation:
Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Professor Ragnar Lofstedt has written a very interesting and thought provoking paper “Risk versus Hazard Assessment – How to Regulate in the 21st Century”. The paper reflects upon the advantages and disadvantages of using risk assessments compared to hazard assessments of chemical compounds. It investigates the debate that has been going on in recent years in Europe between regulators, politicians, NGOs and industry on the subject.

This commentary will discuss some of the assumptions that the analysis rests on as well as some of the conclusions that are presented in the paper.

First, the commentary will discuss the definition and critique of the “risk assessment” approach that Lofstedt presents. The commentary here concludes that Lofstedt's analysis of risk assessment does not take sufficiently into account the fact that risks can not always be calculated in an exact way because uncertainty rather than certainty is the condition when analysing chemicals.

Type
Symposium on Risk versus Hazard
Information
European Journal of Risk Regulation , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , June 2011 , pp. 183 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)