title: Transparent Democratic Foresight Strategies in the California EMF Program.
abstract: A California Department of Health Services program dealt with possible health effects from Electric and Magnetic Fields (EMF) from power lines. With the advice of stakeholders, and well before any risk determinations were made, transparent policy analyses about the power grid and schools asked the question, "How confident must one be of how big an effect before one would adopt cheap or expensive EMF avoidance measures?" A risk evaluation was carried out with features that promoted transparency. It was formatted to provide a policy-neutral "degree of certainty of causality" to adherents of utilitarian, environmental justice, and libertarian policy frameworks. Though the program had many features advocated by adherents of the precautionary principle, it might be better characterized as following "Transparent Democratic Foresight Strategies," since no single principle justifies the strategies used in this participatory program, and it examined the pros and cons of options but made no recommendations, precautionary or otherwise.
authors.affiliation: rneutra@igc.org
authors.forename: Raymond Richard
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Neutra
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Delpizzo
mesh_terms: D026683:Advisory Committees; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D002140:California; D015984:Causality; D032921:Consensus; D003657:Decision Making; D003709:Democracy; D011211:Electric Power Supplies / Q000009:adverse effects; D004574:Electromagnetic Fields / Q000009:adverse effects*; D004781:Environmental Exposure / Q000032:analysis* / Q000517:prevention & control; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D011050:Policy Making; D011635:Public Health Administration; D012106:Research; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D035501:Uncertainty