ENVIRONMENTAL NASTY SURPRISES AS A WINDOW ON PRECAUTIONARY THINKING

By Jeff Howard

All environmental problems are nasty surprises. Each runs counter to

Western society's expectation of endless progress through mastery of nature.[1] 

But the term seems especially appropriate for problems that:

** catch most scientists, technologists, regulatory officials, the mass media, 

and the general public off-guard;

** are already quite extensive by the time they are recognized;

** stem from deeply entrenched technological processes or practices;

** present a potentially large-scale, long-term threat to human or 

ecological health. 

Such problems are surprises because they seem to drop out of the blue -- 

even if it is soon clear that warning signs were long missed, ignored, or 

misinterpreted -- and reveal major errors in scientific thinking and 

public policy. They are nasty because they represent potentially 

enormous hazards and addressing them entails substantial political 

challenges. This combination of characteristics makes these problems 

a useful window into the ongoing controversy over the 

Precautionary Principle and its place in the environmental policy landscape.

ENDOCRINE DISRUPTION AND OTHER NASTY SURPRISES

Endocrine disruption is a classic example of nasty surprise, and indeed 

it was in this context that the term "nasty surprise" may first have been 

applied to environmental issues.[2, pp. 241-242]

Arguably the most significant development in the ecological and 

environmental health sciences in the past two decades has been recognition 

that synthetic industrial chemicals in the environment -- including DDT, 

chlorinated dioxins, numerous polychlorinated biphenyls, various pesticides, 

and obscure  components of plastics -- can interfere with the endocrine 

(hormonal) systems of animals, including humans.[3] Efforts are under 

way to determine whether exposure to these contaminants is linked to 

increases in the incidence of breast cancer, testicular cancer, prostate 

cancer, undescended testicles, abnormalities of the penis, reduced 

sperm count, and learning and behavioral abnormalities as well as 

accelerated onset of breast development.[4]

Endocrine disruption is a surprise. Despite what are now seen as ominous 

warnings over decades, it came into scientific focus quite rapidly in the 

late 1980s and early 1990s largely through a series of accidental 

discoveries. Contrary to the doctrine that toxicological risk diminishes 

with dose, endocrine-disrupting chemicals are specifically (perhaps 

uniquely) active at extremely low doses and their action often hinges 

not on dose but on exposure during key moments in an organism's development. 

And contrary to the assumption that cancer is the most sensitive health 

endpoint, this research is demonstrating that for some chemicals it is 

reproductive and developmental alteration.[2-5, 6, ch. 3]

Endocrine disruption is nasty. To many scientists, government officials, 

and environmental advocates, it implies a potentially enormous 

multigenerational threat to human and ecological health, a threat exacerbated 

by the global ubiquity of some of the pollutants in question and by their 

ability to remain  biologically active for generations to come.[2-7] 

Bewilderingly complex methodological obstacles impede scientific investigation 

into the causes and consequences of endocrine disruption and hence progress 

toward a broadly accepted political response.[3,7] Since U.S.-style pollution 

policy is based on the very toxicological assumptions that endocrine disruption 

undermines, mounting evidence suggests the current regulatory regime is an 

inadequate path to long-term sustainability.[3, ch. 5, 5-7] And regulating 

a diverse and growing list of endocrine disrupting chemicals could have 

significant economic impacts.

Over the past half-century, the environmental policy landscape has been 

littered with similar surprises, including:

** 1960s and 1970s -- Acid precipitation due to long-range atmospheric 

transport of sulfur dioxide poses a widespread threat to aquatic ecosystems 

and forests;

** 1960s and 1970s Large-scale industrial use of lead (especially in 

gasoline) has vastly elevated tissue concentrations of the neurotoxin 

in the general human population;

** 1980s -- The stratospheric ozone layer is being depleted by 

chlorofluorocarbons and other common organochlorine compounds;

** 1980s -- Tin compounds widely applied to boat hulls can severely 

damage the growth and reproduction of marine organisms;

** Recent decades -- Profound disturbances in a wide variety of terrestrial 

and marine organisms, including periodic mass mortalities of dolphins and 

seals and a decline in interregional bird migrations;

** Recent decades -- Plant and animal species across the globe are dying 

off far more rapidly than the natural rate of extinction.

NASTY SURPRISES AND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE

The Precautionary Principle (PP) is increasingly invoked in international 

environmental protocols and agreements and in national and local environmental 

disputes. It holds that when there is significant evidence a new or existing 

technology poses a substantial environmental hazard, lack of detailed scientific 

understanding should not be used as a justification for postponing measures to 

contain the threat.[8] Nasty environmental surprises appear to have played a 

significant role in motivating development of the PP and in shaping efforts 

to implement it.[8, 9] And they often have been prominent in appeals for 

precautionary action, as when endocrine disruption and ozone depletion have 

been cited in articulating a rationale for a precautionary phase-out of major 

industrial uses of chlorine.[6]

In three ways, environmental nasty surprises illuminate the conflict between 

precautionary and conventional modes of environmental decision 

making. They:

1. Dramatically remind us that our understanding of complex natural systems 

and the complex interaction of technologies with those systems remains quite 

sketchy.

Unintended, unexpected, side effects are inevitable features of all large 

technological systems. And when these systems interact with the larger, even 

more complex natural systems (e.g., ecological, atmospheric) in which they 

are embedded, they spin off additional "emergent characteristics" at the 

regional and global levels. The basic mechanisms of change in techno-ecological

systems have been poorly studied, constituting "virtually a black hole of

knowledge and understanding."[10, p. 360, 11] Nasty surprises are emergent

characteristics that remind us contemporary technological systems constitute

"a great global experiment -- with humanity and all life on Earth as the

unwitting subjects."[2, p. 240]

In the case of endocrine disruption, this "experiment" involves essentially 

random encounters between industrial chemicals and the hormonal systems of 

humans and other species. Only a few of the 87,000 synthetic chemicals in 

commerce and the unknown thousands of other industrial chemicals produced 

as byproducts and degradation products have so far been screened for 

endocrine-disrupting properties. Moreover, hormonal systems of animals 

are staggeringly complex, involving a large and poorly understood diversity 

of mechanisms and hormone-receptor activities and diversity between species.[7] 

The open-endedness of this "experiment" is further compounded by the complexity 

of ecological systems that can be altered by chemical disruption of' 

reproduction and development.[2]

Conventional design of chemicals, automobiles, and countless other 

technologies have proceeded largely without regard to humanity's underlying 

ignorance of natural and techno-ecological complexity; and U.S.-style 

environmental regulation has relied on the assumption that "sound science" 

has dispelled or ultimately will dispel such ignorance sufficiently to allow 

society to achieve sustainability. Both conventional design and conventional 

regulation are examples of what Funtowicz and Ravetz call 

"ignorance-of-ignorance, a most dangerous state for [humanity]."[12, p. 1884] 

By contrast, PP proponents have argued that a "precautionary science"-based 

approach must account for the reality of substantial ignorance.[7, 8, ch. 61, 

9, pp. 169-71, 13]

2. Highlight the inadequacy and politics of risk assessment.

Many nasty surprises stem from activities that predate the institutionalization 

of formal environmental risk assessment as the back-bone of the U.S. regulatory 

system in the early 1980s. But nasty surprises nonetheless reflect poorly on 

present risk-based policies.

While limitations of risk assessment have long been discussed by regulators 

and academics, risk assessment's inadequacy as a bulwark against large-scale, 

long-term ecological dysfunction and subtle but profound human health impacts 

has received little attention. Risk assessment is a poor defense against nasty 

surprise because it disregards much of the techno-environmental complexity 

from which surprises emerge.[6,9] Consequently, "The very considerable amount 

of scientific work which has gone into the modeling of environmental risk systems 

over the past few decades cannot... be taken as reassurance that even the main 

dimensions of environmental harm from human activities have been comprehended."

[13, p. 113]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's response to endocrine disruption 

illustrates the dilemma. The agency is pinning its hopes on a program to identify 

hormonally active chemicals and characterize the risk each poses. Although yielding 

valuable information, this program is effectively swamped by the complex diversity 

of chemicals, species, and endocrine mechanisms.[7]

Proponents of precaution argue that the inadequacies of the risk-based regulatory 

paradigm stem from its tacit politics -- its naive optimism about the ability of 

science to plumb the depths of environmental complexity; its ability to conceal 

ignorance; its reductionistic conception of hazard; its technocratic conception 

of power; its disregard for the availability of less-hazardous technologies; its 

willingness to sanction damage to the environment in the interest of economic 

freedom. They call for regulation whose politics is more transparent, more 

democratic, more environmentally cautious, more scientifically humble. They call 

for broader participation in environmental decision making and urge that evaluation 

of a technology include consideration of its social justification, the distribution 

of its social benefits, and the availability of less hazardous alternatives.[6-9, 13-14]

3. Lead us to expect additional nasty surprises.

The enormous pace and scale of human-induced change in global systems that are 

themselves enormously complex means that we are "more and more likely to engender 

problems that we are less and less likely to anticipate."[15, p. 37] Viewing the 

rapid decline in global biodiversity, biologist Myers concludes: "In the midst of 

much scientific uncertainty about our world -- a world on which we are imposing 

multitudes of simultaneous new insults -- we can be all but certain that there are 

environmental processes at work, or waiting in the wings, with the capacity to 

generate significant problems and to take us by ostensible surprise."[10, p. 358] 

Colborn and colleagues, considering the emergence of ozone depletion and endocrine 

disruption, concur. "If anything is certain," they write, "it is that we will be 

blindsided again" probably by "something never even considered."[2, p. 242]. How 

often will nasty surprises emerge? How long will it take us to recognize and address 

them? How much damage will they do? Is the worst behind us, or ahead of us? How much, 

ultimately, is at stake? A precautionary framework for environmental decision making 

would respond to the urgency of such questions by attempting to shape technologies 

in ways calculated to make future nasty surprises less frequent and less severe.

The risk-based regulatory approach, with its disregard for the systemic character 

of nasty surprise and its technocratic mode of responding to new surprises, does 

not offer a viable approach to dealing with nasty surprises. As the European 

Environment Agency concludes in its recent report on precaution, the scientific 

hubris built into western society's technological decision making has made society 

vulnerable to technological blunders that undermine the prospect of sustainability.[9]

REFERENCES

[1] D. Sarewitz, Frontiers of Illusion: Science, Technology, and the 

Politics of Progress. Philadelphia, PA: Temple Univ., 1996.

[2] T. Colborn, D. Dumanoski. and J. Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future: 

Are We Threatening Our Fertility: Intelligence, and Survival? -- 

A Scientific Detective Story. New York, NY: Dutton, 1996.

[3] S. Krimsky, Hormonal Chaos: The Scientific and Social Origins of 

the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins 

Univ. Press, 2000.

[4] G.M. Solomon and T. Schettler, "Endocrine disruption and potential 

human health implications," Canadian Med. Assoc. J., vol. 163, no. 11, 

pp. 1471-1476, 2000.

[5] P.L. deFur, "Public policy recommendations to address endocrine 

disrupting chemicals," Biotechnology International, vol. 2, pp.

230-234, 1999.

[6] J. Thornton, Pandora's Poison: Organochlorines and Health. Cambridge, 

MA: MIT Press, 2000.

[7] J. Thornton, "Chemicals policy and the precautionary principle: 

The case of endocrine disruption," in Science and the Precautionary 

Principle, J. Tickner, Ed. Washington, DC: Island, to be published.

[8] C. Raffensperger and J. Tickner, Eds. Protecting Public Health and 

the Environment: Implementing the Precautionary Principle. Washington, 

DC: Island, 1999.

[9] Late Lessons from Early Warnings: The Precautionary Principle 1896-2000. 

European Environment Agency: Copenhagen, 2001.

[10] N. Myers, "Environmental unknowns," Science, vol. 269, pp. 358-360, 

July 21, 1995.

[11] N. Myers, 'Two key challenges for biodiversity: Discontinuities and 

synergisms," Biodiversity and Conservation, vol. 5, pp. 025-1034,1996.

[12] S.O. Funtowicz and J.R. Ravetz, "Uncertainty, complexity and post-normal 

science," Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, vol. 13, no. 12, pp. 

1881-1885, 1994.

[13] B. Wynne, "Uncertainty and environmental learning: Reconceiving science 

and policy in the preventive paradigm," Global Environmental Change, vol. 2, 

no. 2, pp. 111-127, 1992.

[14] M. O'Brien, Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative to Risk 

Assessment. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2000. 

[15] C. Bright, "Anticipating environmental 'surprise'," in State of the World 

2000: A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society, L. 

Brown et al., Eds. New York, NY: Norton, 2000, pp. 22-38.