Lead and Public Health: Science, Risk and Regulation (Volume 10) (Trace Metals and other Contaminants in the Environment, Volume 10, Band 10) - Hardcover

Von der hinteren Coverseite

A former U.S. Surgeon General publicly called lead the chemical contaminant posing the highest environmental health threat to young children. Lead has had a multi-millennial history as a basic commodity in widespread use during the industrial and cultural development of various peoples. The continuing universal use of lead in the face of its numerous public health hazards can be traced back to various factors. Recent decades, however, have witnessed attempts at addressing lead's adverse impacts within various health risk evaluation and regulation paradigms.

This book characterizes three components of such attempts – science, risk and regulation – in the context of multiple feedback-loop interactive and integrative processes incorporating research, risk assessment, and regulatory actions at various levels. Lead research first produces a global health science database revealing effects of lead exposure from environmental contamination. These data prompt the need to quantify risks of toxic harm from lead exposures. Research and quantified risk data then reveal to policy analysts, legislators and regulators the need for regulatory controls. Legislative and regulatory actions reveal remaining needs for more research and risk evaluations. Support for further research then occurs, repeating the feedback-loop interactive cycle.

Lead's environmental and toxicological behavior makes these interactive relationships challenging to address and implement. It is a multimedia pollutant. It produces actual, diagnosable disease and disease risks depicted probabilistically. Lead’s toxicological potency in humans is expressed empirically without threshold. Pervasive contamination by lead thwarts simple, inexpensive regulatory remedies. This book serves as a guide to these challenges and their solutions.