Government
William Lowrance: probing societal risks In his person he seeks to meld the creative tensions of the arts and sciences. When he isn't painting with watercolors or designing jewelry in gold and silver, he can be found at his desk writing his second book. The theme of this book is the leitmotiv of William W. Lowrance 's life as a public-policy thinker: the ethical issues in science, medicine, and engineering. His life's work wasn't always thus, although fascination with the science-policy domain tugged at him from junior high school days. Initially, Lowrance pursued a traditional path in science. In 1970 he received a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and biochemistry from Rockefeller University in New York City. For the next year he worked at Eastman Kodak as a research chemist, ending his career as an industrial chemist with a patent for synthesizing phenyl esters. But then the tug became too great. Eschewing a hybrid career of research scientist and science-policy thinker, Lowrance decided to devote all his efforts to the latter endeavor. Today he is director of Rockefeller University's new life sciences and public policy program, but the stops along the way were many and varied: research fellow at the National
Academy of Sciences, where he wrote the well-received book, "Of Acceptable Risk: Science & the Determination of Safety"; special assistant to the undersecretary of State for security assistance, science, and technology in the Carter Administration, where he was involved in the decision to burn at sea thousands of tons of agent orange left over from the Vietnam war; and visiting professor at Stanford University, where
C&EN: Would you define acceptable risk in a generic sense, and then more specifically as it applies to human exposure to toxic waste from a chemical disposal site? Lowrance: Well, in a general sense, I have been seeking to find some way of describing what we do when we as a society decide to endure a risk, reduce it, or spread it in some way through society. And I have used the term acceptable because it is a useful way to organize one's thinking. It implies that part of a personal or social decision has to do with the likelihood or consequences of ill effect from the risk. Quite separate from that is one's value judgment about the risk—whether it is acceptable or not. So there are two separate mental or social functions: to decide what the risk is; then to decide what to do about it. Of course the term has several different meanings. One, in a somewhat stoic way, people simply endure the risk without complaining. They see no alternatives,
he directed the policy courses in the program in human biology. Whatever the way station, Lowrance has always pursued a humanistic approach to the study of the scientific and technological elements of contemporary problems, especially setting his probing mind to the thorny issue of societal risk. Certainly the unsettling seventies, a renaissance period for regulatory activism, left no sector of society untouched. A patchwork quilt of laws was enacted to govern consumer products, safeguard workers, protect the environment. Unfortunately, the resulting plethora of consumer warnings, health scares, and environmental lawsuits has drawn society into a "regulatory catalepsy," Lowrance says. To extricate us from this state, to disabuse us of the myth of a risk-free society, he urges a systematic assessment of hazards. In this interview with C&EN associate editor Lois R. Ember, Lowrance focuses on the land disposal of the toxic chemical remains of our industrialized society. He discusses the major components of this assessment—characterizing risk, setting stable priorities, accommodating scientific and lay perceptions of risk, and weighing risks against costs and benefits.
and decide that for whatever reasons the hazard is just tolerable. A second meaning is that people know essentially what the risks are, but decide to accept them. Smoking is probably a very good example of that. At the other end of the spectrum are risks that we see as absolutely intolerable, such as chemicals or radiation that cause birth defects. In this case, it is more useful to speak of unacceptable risk, and we as a society or a subgroup of society decide to do something about reducing the risk. Of course, the ranking of a risk as acceptable or not is not an absolute line at all. Sometimes we worry about hazards that are not so risky as some others, and we probably let some hazards go unattended that we would worry more about if we really examined the statistics. As the term acceptable risk applies to toxic waste sites, I think that issue is still quite immature. We haven't had a chance to decide what the health and environmental risks are for many sites. It's very clear that sites differ greatly in their chemical content, in their underlying geology, and in the July 6, 1981 C&EN
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Government C&EN: But knowing what we do know about one site—Love Canal—can we rank the risk of living near it to the risk of living near a nuclear power plant, or driving a car on a New York City street at rush hour? Lowrance: I'm not able to yet. I think eventually we will be able to. But it seems to me that one of the problems in this area is that chemical waste sites have been treated as an exotic issue, as a special source of chemical exposure for human beings. I think the only way out of this problem is to integrate it into our general considerations of air and water pollution. And until we are able to know what contribution waste sites make to overall chemical contamination of groundwater or municipal water supplies or domestic wells, I think we really won't be able to compare them to other chemical risks, much less to the risk of airline travel, coal mining, nuclear power, specified consumer risks, and so on.
I've found the word safe not to be a very useful word . . . everything has risks under some circumstances to some people
potential for human exposure in the neighborhood of the site. Thus we are some distance away from being able to make summary statements about the acceptability or unacceptability of waste sites for the nation. C&EN: For the nation, in a general sense. But can it be done for specific sites? Lowrance: Yes. I think it has to be done for individual sites. Obviously, if we decide to do nothing about a site, to leave it as it is, we are accepting that site. On the other hand, if communities decide to do something about the site, to monitor any leakage from the site, to do health studies or environmental studies on exposed populations or environments, then they are taking action on deciding about the acceptability of that site. C&EN: Would you equate acceptable to safe, in a generic sense? Lowrance: No. I've found the word safe not to be a very useful word. I prefer not to use it. Everything has risks under some circumstances to some people. So, I prefer to speak of risk level and risk acceptability. C&EN: At this time, is it possible to rank the risk from exposure to chemical landfills relative to other societal risks? Lowrance: Not yet. I feel that very strongly. It's much too early to be able to know what the risks really are. Again, I want to emphasize that there are a great number of sites and they are very, very different from each other. There has not been time to study many of those sites in any detail technically. In many cases, they're full of horrible—sometimes unknown—mixtures of chemicals. The chemicals, of course, have undergone changes since they were put into the landfill, so we don't know what's in the landfill, much less what the effects on human health or the surrounding environment might be. 14
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C&EN: How do we begin to weigh burden of risk from chemical dumps against programs designed to defend against those risks? How do we begin to define hazards and agree upon goals? Lowrance: The first thing we have to do is learn more about potential health and environmental effects from the dumpsites. And until we know that, it's going to be very hard to appraise the overall social burden from those waste sites. C&EN: What elements would you put into that calculus? Risks? Costs? Benefits? Lowrance: In the overall societal calculus, I certainly would use all of those things. I would use the human health risk, the general environmental risk, the benefits of the chemical industry activity to society, the special problems to local, affected populations, special effects on workers at the waste sites, and so on. I would then want to know the costs of all the possible remedial actions or alternative activities for coping with the waste. C&EN: Do you think it's possible now? Lowrance: No. We are nowhere close to being able to do that in a satisfactory way. The first thing I would like to see us do is try some assessments on representative but different kinds of waste sites. One hears estimates for the number of waste sites in the U.S. ranging in the thousands or even several tens of thousands. It seems to me we should select 12 or 15 different kinds of sites—geologically different, environmentally different, and so on—and do an estimate of the overall projected environmental and health hazards. Then put those in context with the benefits of that chemical activity. Also, perhaps, look at the relative cost-effectiveness of different ways—recycling, incineration, or ocean disposal—of disposing of that waste at that site or elsewhere. C&EN: What are the constraints to carrying out studies on comparative risk and risk-reduction effectiveness of large government programs such as the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) and superfund? Lowrance: Well, first of all, I don't think we have the needed basic information. First, we don't have much information on the chemical content of many dumps, or the
migration of that material. Second, we don't have much information on the engineering of the dumps and the geology at the sites. And third, we don't know enough about how to assess health effects to surrounding exposed communities. And until we know these things, it's going to be very hard for us to compare one site with another for remedial attention, for monitoring, or for further health studies. A lot of preliminary research needs to be done, and I don't have the sense that it has been done yet. There are probably some clear public health emergency sites that do need attention under superfund and RCRA. But I would like to see us hold off on spending all funds available under the two programs until we have a better idea of where the priorities ought to be set. And I understand that there is substantial effort going on, not only within the Environmental Protection Agency, but also within the states to "prioritize" sites. C&EN: As a society we are setting agreed-upon goals for certain activities; can you give some specific examples? Lowrance: We have taken major actions over the last few years to control the manufacture and dispersal of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's). We have taken actions to reduce our exposure to 2,4,5-T and its dioxins. We have reduced the manufacture of and the spraying or industrial use of these compounds. We have taken strong precautions in the disposal or destruction of these compounds. And, in the case of PCB's in the Hudson River, we are taking remedial cleanup action to remove them from the general environment. In that process, we have raised a series of caution flags, not only against future use of these compounds, but compounds that are like them or likely to be like them in their persistence, in their health effects, and so on. We have begun to take specific, even costly actions against these compounds. C&EN: But that was after the fact, after they had been dispersed. Are we doing anything as a society now to set agreed-upon goals, to avert future PCB-like problems? Lowrance: Yes. I think what's happened with a whole series of incidents following assessment of certain persistent pesticides and the compounds that I just named is that we have identified categories of environmental and health effects in these cases as being intolerable or barely tolerable to society. There is very strong demonstration value here. For instance, as an industry begins to develop a new product line, it will think very hard about whether that particular chemical product line resembles chemicals that we have drawn boundaries around and tried to eliminate from our food supply or air and water environments. I would like to make one additional point. Sometimes people say that it's lamentable that we spent so many years and so many dollars arguing over this or that pesticide, in this or that set of hearings before EPA or the Agriculture Department or the Food & Drug Administration. But they forget that the demonstration value, the pilot value, of those deliberations far exceeds the mere number of dollars or even lives saved from that one chemical because it sets precedent. And we don't have to go through the same hearings, the same development of scientific evidence, for analogous compounds in the future. C&EN: Well, that was the Occupational Safety & Health Administration's argument in trying to pro-
mulgate its generic cancer policy, which it wasn't very successful in doing. Lowrance: Right. I think it's very hard to do. We have not developed firm generic criteria in any single area of chemical exposure. I certainly acknowledge that. But we have made real progress in indicating some categories of possible insult that most Americans are not willing to tolerate. It's a much softer kind of indication than a printed generic policy on classes of compounds, but I think some guidelines are becoming much clearer. C&EN: How would you begin to set priorities for the cleanup of existing landfills? Lowrance: I would like to see us practice at several different landfills around the country. In those demonstration assessments we would want to consider the geological situation and the engineering design of the landfill. The second thing we would want to think about is actual exposure to human beings. Exposure assessment is one of the most uncertain and tricky areas in this whole business. It doesn't matter so much to us that a chemical is in a dump, what matters is whether human beings are exposed at any significant levels to it over time. C&EN: But even if we do set priorities at these demonstration dumps, how can an agency take action in an unknown situation—an abandoned dump—where it doesn't know the geology, it doesn't know how far the chemicals have migrated, it doesn't know whether there has been human exposure? Lowrance: I think the agency would want to begin with a geological survey, with analysis of the chemical contents of the dump, and with monitoring or modeling human exposure to chemicals from the dumpsite. It would go through that list of assessments, and then back that up with reviews of historical records, the company's own records of what was put in the dump, how the dump was treated over time physically, and so on.
We have not developed firm generic criteria in any single area of chemical exposure
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Government C&EN: Is EPA setting what you have called "protectable priorities?" And would you define that phrase. Lowrance: In some of my writing, I've said that agencies need to set priorities for their actions and indeed those priorities need to be "protectable." That is to say, once the agency, with the full mandate of Congress and the Administration, begins to pursue a course of protection, it is able to stay with it long enough to do a good job, and is not diverted by minor distracting affairs that can overwhelm the organization. With the change of Administrations and the apparent rethinking of superfund, I can't say whether EPA is setting or will set protectable priorities. During the Carter Administration, however, EPA under superfund sought advice on setting priorities. Mitre Corp. in Virginia was commissioned to do a background study on the criteria for setting priorities among waste-disposal sites. So there has been some thinking about the way we might go about picking the worst of the sites for early attention under superfund. C&EN: If the effects of exposure to a particular chemical are deemed to be intolerable, and the chemical is known to be buried in the landfill, is it appropriate to apply the degree of risk—what you call the "risk ceiling" for that chemical—to the landfill as a whole? Lowrance: I think, again, that's a matter that depends on the chemical and the characteristics of its burial site. There may be traces of arsenic or cyanide or PCB's in the dump, but the action taken may depend on the integrity of the dumpsite itself. If the chemical isn't leaking from the site, perhaps the best thing to do is to leave the chemical in place, but monitor the site over a long time. On the other hand, if the housekeeping of the dump has not been very tight, and there is a high volume of PCB's in the dump, then action as severe as digging up part of the dump, removing it, and extracting some of its contents may be warranted. I don't think there is any one formula that can be applied to all situations.
Risk ceiling is the upper bound of the amount of a chemical we as a society deem tolerable. Beyond that bound, exposure to the chemical would be considered intolerable
C&EN: Would you elaborate on your concept of risk ceiling? Lowrance: Yes. Risk ceiling is the upper bound of the amount of a chemical we as a society deem tolerable. Beyond that bound, exposure to the chemical would be considered intolerable. In some cases, we have set ceilings for risks, though usually not against any one discrete individual hazard such as an automobile or a pharmaceutical. What I have noticed is that some government agencies have regulated ceilings for an entire industry or endeavor, such as nuclear power generation, and have said essentially that they will consider all nuclear accidents larger than this scale and probability unacceptable. In effect they have set a ceiling for some overall activity in society, which manufacturers of individual equipment keep in mind as they design their own component of that national enterprise. C&EN: An analogous situation, then, would be for an agency such as EPA to set ceilings for classes of chemicals that it would take action on if they were found in a landfill. Lowrance: That's right. Either classes of chemicals or classes of health effects. That is, for example, air pollution in cities should not cause more than a cer.tain amount of specified respiratory illnesses. C&EN: This has not been done to date, has it? Lowrance: Not really, no. It's implicit in some of the laws and it's certainly explicit in some of the things that municipalities or industries have done. But it often is not explicitly stated as a ceiling. C&EN: Should we then as a nation begin to write our laws explicitly to set risk ceilings? Lowrance: I think in some cases we can begin to do that. There are two considerations. First we have to get beyond the myth that some things can be risk free. We have to admit that various things we do in society have risks: that generating electricity has its risks, that transporting people has risks, and so on. That's been done in some areas, particularly in the food and drug area. Recent FDA decisions involving several hair dyes and residual diethylstilbestrol in meat have explicitly recognized a residual harm in a product, but have allowed that product to remain on the market under certain conditions. That's the first thing being explicit does: admit that there is risk. The other, then, is that we can deliberate about what levels of risk we are willing to endure for certain product classes or for certain kinds of activities—again, such as making energy or flavoring our foods. I don't think we are going to be able to do this for chemical waste anytime soon, partly because waste has a negative connotation. The activities that generate the chemical-waste risks, of course, are very beneficial to society in general. But waste itself, by definition, has very strong negative connotations, and it's hard to talk about the positive, social "value" of that waste. C&EN: Should we take a breathing spell until we can address the chemical waste problem in a deliberate manner? Lowrance: First of all, we may have studied some sites in sufficient detail that we can identify them as needing
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attention right now—that is, they are releasing substantial quantities of known dangerous chemicals into the environment to which people are being exposed. Some sites currently are under very close scrutiny and may well warrant cleanup and remedial action. Secondly, for various political and social reasons we may wish to go ahead and clean up some sites because local pressure is demanding such action. C&EN: Well, that goes back to an earlier statement that you made, that sometimes we attack problems that have very little risk but have so much emotional value attached to them that we tackle them and ignore more risky problems. Lowrance: One of the major difficulties that our modern society confronts is the problem of expert perception of risk as compared to lay perception of risk. And remember that a Nobel Laureate physicist is a lay person when it comes to assessing chemical-waste-site health risks, and a dean of a medical school may be a lay person when it comes to assessing the risks of a nuclear power plant. So Fm not just saying scientist versus nonscientist. But we do have difficulty as a nation in dealing with problems in which there are many different perceptions of the magnitude of the threat to society. C&EN: How do we begin to bridge the difference between expert perception and lay perception? Lowrance: I think that's one of the most important things for us to begin to try to do. Fm beginning to see some hopeful signs. At the recent Rockefeller University symposium on the assessment of health effects at chemical disposal sites, Morton Corn of Johns Hopkins University described approaches that teams of experts, government officials, and industry are taking at Memphis, Tenn., dumpsites. Here, as the assessment of the contents of the dumps proceeds, so does the planning for health studies and remedial action. Officials are meeting—as often as once a month—with local citizens and representatives of special-interest groups from that area. And I find that a very useful way to proceed. More generally, federal agencies are holding more public hearings on their research protocols, their priority setting, and their thoughts about regulation. I think that's healthy, too. C&EN: Would you agree that the public outcry and political clamor has catapulted the issue of hazardous waste dumps out of the scientific realm into the political arena, that the issue has, in Alvin Weinberg's phrase, become trans-scientific? Lowrance: Well, certainly public attention has come to the issue and the media has amplified that attention enormously, sometimes responsibly, sometimes not so responsibly. I personally don't find the term trans-science very useful. It means different things to different people. All these issues are hybrids of social and more technical components. And I don't think they can ever be divorced. C&EN: Well, isn't that in part what he means by trans-scientific? Lowrance: I think he means by that term to refer to decisions that inherently are scientifically unknowable. For instance, in his earliest papers he referred to cases like
We have difficulty as a nation in dealing with problems in which there are many different perceptions of the magnitude of the threat to society
Hoover Dam. We will never test Hoover Dam to the breaking point. Therefore we will never really know the scientific probability of failure of Hoover Dam. We can estimate by using models, but we can never test the dam completely because we simply can't test it to its own ultimate failure point. C&EN: But you would agree that the hazardous waste issue is now more in a political realm than a scientific realm. Lowrance: Yes, but you see, going back to the word trans-science, I think Weinberg is referring not to things that are "not science," but to areas in which science inherently fails to reach. But certainly issues such as those of waste disposal are hybrids of social, ethical, political, legal, and economic concerns as well as technical and medical concerns. C&EN: Well, then, what hybrid governmental/ nongovernmental approaches do you see evolving to address the problem? Lowrance: First of all, I'd say that economic and legal and ethical considerations are discussed in government, in industry, in special-interest groups, and in labor unions; not one of these organizations concerns itself solely with scientific or political or legal or social issues. Certainly the federal government is not the only government entity dealing with the waste issue. In fact, on this kind of issue, the problem is intensely special to the affected locale. So municipal, county, and state governments are working very hard on this issue, quite apart from the federal government (though sometimes with it). States are developing task forces for dealing with existing sites or with siting criteria for the future; this is being done in consultation with federal agencies. Secondly, I now see some useful task forces involving government, industry, citizen groups, and others. In California, the state government sets up a protocol for study of a waste site, but the industry does the study, performs the analyses, and, in consultation with state authorities, conducts July 6, 1981 C&EN
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Government not well designed. The scientific community can contribute by insisting on continual review of scientific work, even if it is not their own, and by maintaining the pressure for high-quality assessment. C&EN: Does the scientist's role end with an assessment of the relative magnitude of the hazard and the assurance of high-quality science, or can he or she contribute to the crucial decision-making process?
I would like to see better management of scientific assessment so that we can anticipate problems
the overall assessment. The state for its part maintains random-sampling quality control, checks'the integrity of records and calculations, and in an iterative way stays in touch with the assessment. That seems to me to be a constructive model, and I have heard both from members of industry and the government there that the approach works. C&EN: What is the scientist's role in making crucial decisions to reduce or eliminate dumpsite crises? Lowrance: One of the things I'm concerned about is that we bring a little more stability to our social decision making. You have used the word crises quite fairly. Authorities, including scientific and health authorities, have generated crises from time to time, including at waste sites. Sometimes it's justified; other times I'm not so sure it is. I would like to see better management of scientific assessment, so that we can anticipate problems as well as try to avoid ringing the alarm bell prematurely. That's hard to do. It's quite natural for authorities responsible for a situation to become alarmed, to take conservative action, to raise the alarm before there is certainty that people are going to be harmed. C&EN: How can scientists make a contribution to better management of scientific assessment? Lowrance: Scientists can contribute by continuing to remind public authorities—scientific or otherwise—of what the possible and relative health impact or environmental impact might be from various hazards. If they see authorities becoming very concerned about an issue, technical people often can put it into context. I think that a constant attempt to develop a societal sense of the relative magnitude of hazards is a contribution scientists can and should make, whether they work as officials themselves or as advisers. Another role for scientists is to continue to press to keep the quality of the science very high. Again, that sounds like a platitude. But we've seen examples in the waste-site arena of scientific information that was released prematurely or experiments that were 18
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Lowrance: Scientists have those two roles. Beyond that, deciding whether some hazard is too great for society to bear, or whether some course of action should be taken, or whether legal liability should be levied is not a matter for science as science. However, people who are technically trained may be called upon—either as appointive or elective officials or as members of advisory bodies—to take stands and judge for society what is acceptable and what is not. But in making judgments of that kind they should be aware that they are making value-laden social judgments. C&EN: Then technical people can help the public understand the risks, thus enabling it to make the decision about acceptability? Lowrance: Yes. Though in general that has not occurred. Although when apprehension about Love Canal was at its height, the governor of New York convened a panel chaired by Lewis Thomas, a very respected medical researcher and writer, to review the scientific situation at Love Canal. I think the publication of the Thomas review, which was amplified by the New York Times and other news media and was discussed by a number of different groups, probably had an interpretive ameliorating effect on that public situation. C&EN: Except the review was very deficient. Lowrance: True. I'm saying that I think the mechanism of having a panel of respected health experts was a good thing. I thought the review itself was slender—it did not go into the various technical questions in enough detail, it didn't document its conclusions very well, and it didn't recommend more effective studies that could be done. And I don't think it helped place the dumpsite situation in perspective. C&EN: Would you expand on your views of allowing technical experts to lay out the risk involved in a situation, but then stepping back to permit the public to make the decision of risk acceptability? Lowrance: As the hazardous waste site issue becomes more mature, as task forces do their work, the organized public is getting more of an opportunity to press for understanding and interpretation. In the public hearing process, there's plenty of opportunity for asking questions and challenging evidence, and this is often reported in local newspapers. Technical authorities have every opportunity to explain in straightforward terms what's going on at a waste site or what kinds of studies they are undertaking. C&EN: Except that the impetus for this is the cry from the public, not from the experts. It's a mechanism that is evolving but it's evolving because of the public clamor for answers.
Lowrance: There is impetus from several directions. But certainly, the public is calling for studies of these waste sites and, as I said, the public is often right. The public is right to call for better planning for the future, examination of options, and so on. I think, too, that technical experts of many sorts have pressed for review. I don't think the impetus for public scrutiny of waste sites comes solely from public outcry. C&EN: Can you give examples of experts that have pressed for review? Lowrance: Advisory bodies to EPA and other government agencies have been concerned about these issues. There has been substantial discussion in the National Research Council and National Academy of Sciences about this issue. I understand that the Chemical Manufacturers Association has had a task force for several years on assessment of existing waste sites, and there has been substantial sharing of experience among the members of industry. Partly because of the public outcry, a lot of industries have undertaken review of their existing or even past waste sites. A lot of technical people have come to realize that this is an issue that has gotten too little attention for too long. So I think the impetus for a study of waste sites has come from many sources. C&EN: You have written that crises or what you call "risk-related instabilities" arise as much from changing societal attitudes and evolving decisionmaking processes as from imperfect technical analysis and performance. Would you elaborate on this, especially as it could result in confrontations between industry and governments? Lowrance: Our values have been changing over recent years partly because we live long enough now to have the luxury of worrying about some risks that in an earlier time in our history we didn't have to worry about. More people live to a later age, and the pattern of illness has changed substantially. We've conquered a lot of diseases like tuberculosis and polio, and we have reduced the threat of many infant diseases. In many ways, we have buffered other threats such as natural disasters like floods and hurricanes by technological advances, including warning systems and better construction. Secondly, there was a time in this country when there was a lot of open space and one could discard things without thought— dump them in the river, out in the desert, or on the back forty and forget about them. That's not possible any longer—land is more scarce, and peoples' values about the use of land and possible health effects from chemical exposure have changed. C&EN: Would you address the problem of confrontations between industry and governments? Lowrance: It's a kind of paradox. On the one hand, we have confrontations over the risks of dumpsites because we suspect that the chemicals in the dump cause health problems but we are not absolutely certain. So we have heated discussions because we know enough to be apprehensive, but we don't know enough to really assess the situation as thoroughly and as quickly as we would like. And because we now understand so much but not enough, we worry. So the paradox: We get into confrontation because we don't know enough to know what the situation really is; conversely, we worry more now because we understand that exposure to chemicals causes disease.
We know enough to be apprehensive, but we don't know enough to really assess the situation as thoroughly . . . as we would like
C&EN: Does legislation such as RCRA and superfund set up this confrontation—usually in the courts? Lowrance: By developing a framework for argument, legislation almost by definition causes confrontation, though parties who believe they are being injured can still sue other parties, quite apart from this regulatory legislation. Even if we didn't have superfund or RCRA as laws, there still would be a great number of lawsuits pitting local citizens against municipal governments who have allowed or have developed chemical landfills, or against the industries that have dumped the chemicals. But when we passed these two laws we set up an identifiable framework for that confrontation. However, instead of it taking place in the tort courts, confrontation is occurring in a quasi-judicial scene—in agencies like EPA. C&EN: There have been repeated calls for government-sponsored scientific advisory panels to which technological disputes could be appealed. Would you discuss the concept, especially as it might be a mechanism for separating the scientific and technical determinations from the political and social? Lowrance: A number of people and a number of organizations over the years have called for technical courts of appeal or scientific tribunals to which scientific judgments could be referred, particularly technical calls in the course of a regulatory dispute. And there were some of these back even in the earliest days of the President's Science Advisory Committee in the 1960's. Disputes over 2,4,5-T went to that committee as did other questions where there was great scientific uncertainty and where the public problem was potentially a large one. Some people, of course, have proposed a national science court—something like a supreme court for refereeing scientific truth. In the past year or so, groups such as the American Industrial Health Council and several members of Congress have proposed a regulatory science corps or a national science panel, comprised of technical experts who could rule on food and drug science issues such as July 6, 1981 C&EN
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Government C&EN: What about the issue of hazardous waste dumps? Lowrance: I don't see any special role for a national panel to review it. I think the issue of hazardous waste has so many different components—some of them having to do with geology, some with engineering, some with reproductive medicine, or with epidemiology, or with toxicology—that I'm not sure a standing national panel can resolve the issue. On the other hand, I think national studies, such as those by the National Academy of Sciences, for example, should be encouraged. C&EN: Other than structuring debate, is there value to cost-benefit analysis that overcomes the inherent problems and frequent abuses associated with the use of this technique?
I just don't know how to apply cost-benefit analysis to a toxic waste site saccharin or Laetrile, or occupational safety and health issues such as vinyl chloride, or on consumer issues such as spray cans or the Pinto automobiles or even on a Love Canal situation in which there is great dispute over the science. C&EN: These courts would advise only on the science, not on the political, social, or ethical overtones. They would, then, be a mechanism for separating the science from the political and social determinations. Correct? Lowrance: Most of the proposals would be a way of separating the scientific judgments from social judgments. I personally don't believe those two can ever be separated completely. For instance, even in setting the ground rules for what is to be determined by a supreme court of science, one already is making social judgments. I'll use the hypothetical example of a waste-site problem. If that high authority took it upon itself to review the waste site and only considered the cancer-causing properties of the chemicals and did not look at possible reproductive health threats, even by setting its own rules for review, it already has made a social judgment: Cancer is what is important and reproductive issues are not so important. The other point I would make is that one can propose developing a science court that would also serve to make judgments for society. Some people have proposed that these courts be open about it and say that they are judging not only the technical part but also the social issues.
Lowrance: There is no single technique that one can refer to as cost-benefit analysis. It's a whole cluster of many different specific approaches to the weighing of costs, risks, and benefits. And I don't see that any one approach has been sanctified yet. I think that its principal value is to lay out the questions clearly, describe the assumptions made in various approaches to analyzing the problem, and then put forth some statements or calculations that are open for criticism. C&EN: Is there a risk-decision model preferable to cost-benefit analysis? Lowrance: An alternative might be cost-effectiveness analysis. In this technique, one decides what the social objective is, and then compares the cost-effectiveness of the alternative ways of getting there. It doesn't have to take into account any measure of the benefit to human life. Once the goal is decided, one can make the social management decisions without having to get into any arguments about the worth of human life. C&EN: What is the best way of relating the cost and benefits to risk? Using cost-benefit analysis or risk-effectiveness determination? Lowrance: I think I would prefer the cost-effectiveness approach. I just don't know how to apply cost-benefit analysis to a toxic waste site. C&EN: How do you view the repeated calls for the use of cost-benefit analysis in laws and regulations? Lowrance: Well, the calls for use of cost-benefit analysis as part of regulatory proceedings certainly have become the vogue. In many cases it is seen as a panacea. I'm not sure that it is. First of all, it's already done in many cases in a very broad way.
C&EN: What would happen to the quality of science in this process?
C&EN: Are you alarmed by the repeated calls for its use?
Lowrance: I think we need to try to improve the quality of science brought to bear on public decisions, regulatory and otherwise. I believe that having high-level review panels in government or industry or hybrid organizations is in principle a very good thing. And I argue for scientific pluralism. When an issue becomes important, a number of different bodies ought to review it.
Lowrance: I guess I'm not alarmed by them, but I think they are naive in many cases. I think the people who call for them most strongly are usually people who have never tried to do one. It's a very difficult business. And I think the people who like cost-benefit analysis as a method usually are those who find that the analysis comes out in their favor. •
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C&EN July 6, 1981
