title: The chemical wars.
abstract: The culture of economic growth and rapid innovation has led the chemical industry to contaminate tens of thousands of locales with hazardous chemicals that are poorly understood. As a result, the chemical industry finds itself at war with citizens who are troubled by the widespread dissemination of industrial poisons and alarmed by the power and unaccountability of the corporations themselves. The current chemical regulatory system has not provided an effective or reassuring restraint on chemical contamination because it relies heavily on a technique called risk assessment instead of the newer approach being tried now in Europe and elsewhere, the precautionary principle. Here's a riddle to keep you up at night: How come, at a time when the environmental movement is stronger and richer than ever, our most pressing ecological problems just get worse? It's as though the planet has hit a Humpty-Dumpty moment in which unprecedented amounts of manpower and money are unable to put the world back together again.
authors.affiliation: Evironmental Research Foundation, New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0160, USA. erf@rachel.org
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Montague