Ethics and Science
Recently I have been substitute teaching a general environmental course for nonmajors, discussing drinking water quality, treatment, and the general principles of risk assessment. After class one day a student said to me that he recently heard a health professional (he did not say who) give a speech about the byproducts formed during the treatment of pulp and paper with chlorine. He said that the speaker emphasized the ethics of the issue, rather than the science. The point this student remembered most vividly was that no matter what the details were of the risk assessment for dioxin (2,3,7,8-TCDD,I presume), it was onlyright for the pulp and paper industry to discontinue the use of chlorine-immediately! Apparently the speaker felt that the dangers of dioxin, though not thoroughly understood, were sufficiently serious to justify immediate action, notwithstanding other impacts. Scientists will argue about the precise level of risk, the speaker reportedly said, but by the time that is settled, unnecessary damage to humans and other species would have occurred. Better for industry to act now, even in the face of the uncertainties; it is the only ethical thing to do. The speaker may be wrong about TCDD, of course. If the dose-response curve is nonlinear, or if there is a no-effect level of the chemical, the quantitative risk assessment will change immensely. This could change a quibble about the exact magnitude of the risk to a question of whether there is any risk at all. Based on the risk of 2,3,7,8-TCDDalone, there would therefore be no ethical question to debate. If a threshold exists, then “safe” again becomes a proper term. The speaker does have a point, of course. Perhaps she or he knows that TCDD is only one of many chlorinated byproducts that are formed in the bleaching of pulp. Perhaps she or he knows
that TCDD is, in a sense, a surrogate for all of these compounds whose effects on humans and other species are not fully understood. Many people in the pulp and paper industry do appreciate these arguments, and much research is under way to develop ways to avoid the discharge of chlorinated compounds. Perhaps the speaker was simply saying that this process should be accelerated. My concern is that the speaker did not appreciate these subtleties; that the science of the argument-in this case the shape of the dose-response curve-was not brought up. Was the purpose of the paper to discuss the relative merits of alternative courses of action, or was the paper a statement of ideology? In the business of environmental and health protection, science and ethics are often weighed unequally. I hope that the speech my student heard was more balanced than he related and that, in the future, ethics and good science will not be separated.
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0013-936)(19210926-633$03.00/0 0 1992 American Chemical Society
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 26. No. 4, 1992 633
