Environmental Conditions
 "It shouldn't happen here" UK Government nuclear safety policy Source: Private Eye |
While unemployment, poverty, and
housing are three large, well studied conditions, the study of the impact
of environmental agents on human health is far more difficult. There are
more than 60,000 new man-made chemicals that have entered our environment
in the last 100 years. It took 20,000 scientific papers and 20 years of
research to establish that smoking is bad for health. The study of the
effects of environmental agents and health is beset with difficulty.
Politicians assert "There is no scientific proof that agent X causes
disease Y"; but "proof" is not an option in science; the best status that
a hypothesis can achieve is not-yet-disproven. Scientific study needs
political will and adequate funding. BILLS OF HEALTH shows that in
at least two cases of environmental pollution, British official scientists
used the scholastic rather than the scientific method to try to offset any
public concern. Science also likes to study one factor in isolation,
whereas in the environment, factors work together in systems. Synergy -
the ability of one agent to increase the effect of another, is
underestimated as a cause of ill-health.
In this book, some of the principal environmental problems are surveyed from the health standpoint, and a new way of overcoming the economic problems inherent in scientific risk assessment of new products is set out. The bottom line is that environmental conditions cost the NHS somewhere between £3,665,000,000 and ££4,032,000,000 per annum. One of the key arguments about the risks from new chemicals in the environment is to be found here. |