Environmental hygiene and management of chemicals.
Limit values (LVs) are legal concentration limits for constituents, residues and contaminants in consumer products or for emissions from production processes into environmental compartments. They are a traditional regulatory aid to manage chemicals in human environments. To make them proactive, LVs should become enforced by means of a transparent and informed decision process whose starting point is the Basic Rule of Environmental Hygiene, BREH:Avoid useless exposure as far as possible, minimize useful exposure in a reasonable manner, and prevent that exposure which is dangerous. The BREH calls upon minimizing exposure not only according to on site risk potentials and acceptance, but also to off site avoidability and acceptability.
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Institute for Water, Soil and Air Hygiene of the Federal Environmental Agency, P.O. Box 330022, D-14191, Berlin, Germany.