Transcript in Late Lessons from Early Warnings

“Late Lessons from Early Warnings”: some
insights on Knowledge, Precaution and
Innovation.
David Gee, formerly Senior Adviser, Science,
Policy, Emerging Issues,
European Environment Agency, 1995-2013
Copenhagen.
Visiting Fellow, Institute of Environment,
Health and Societies, Brunel University, London.
1
Summary
• What’s in the “Late Lessons” reports?
• Some insights on expanding knowledge:
implications for impact analysis and
research
• Precaution and a sufficiency of evidence
for action?
• Precaution and Innovation.
Homo Sapiens (tragicus?) as slow learners
Two volumes
2001
2013
34 case studies in ”Late Lesons” reports 2001/13
‘Environmental
chemicals’
• Beryllium
• PCBs
• CFCs
• TBT antifoulants
• Mercury
• Environmental
Tobacco
• Perchlorethylene
• Booster biocides
• DBCP
• DDT
• Vinyl chloride
• Bisphenol A
Ecosystems
• Ecosystems resilience
• Great Lakes pollution
• Fish stock collapse
• Acid rain
• Bee decline, France
• Invasive alien species
• Floods
• Climate change
Transport fuel additives
• Benzene
• MBTE
• Lead
‘Micro technologies’
• Nano
• GMOs
Animal feed additives
• BSE, ‘mad cow disease’
• Beef hormones
• Antibiotics
• Asbestos
Pharmaceuticals
• Birth control pill in
rivers
• DES
Radiations
• X-rays
• Mobile phones
• Nuclear accidents
and 8 “horizontal “ chapters..
• the “12 late lessons” from vol 1…
..and in vol 2:
• the precautionary principle;
• false positives;
• precautionary science;
• costs of inaction;
• protection of early warning scientists;
• why businesses ignore early warnings;
• Conclusions.
• 2 Annexes on summaries & updates of vol 1 case
studies.
When was first plausible early warning?
1896 radiation; climate change;
1897 benzene;
1898 asbestos;
1925 leaded petrol;
1965 antibiotics in animal feed;
1992/3 Goucho pesticide and bee decline;
1999 mobile phones
The early warning on Leaded petrol at the one
day “trial” of leaded petrol, May 1925
“the development of lead poisoning will
come on so insidiously ..that leaded petrol
will be in nearly universal use..before the
public and the government awakens to the
situation.”
Yendell Henderson, Professor of Physiology at Yale.
“Lead makes the mind give way: lead in petrol”
Needleman & Gee, Late Lessons, EEA 2013
Fish Ecosystems: an early warning
The Newfoundland Cod
fishery is being overfished
(Keates, 1986) …
...dismissed by Canadian Dept
of Fisheries & Oceans as
“biased pseudoscience
written to support a political
agenda”.
MacGarvin, “Fisheries: Taking
Stock”, in Late Lessons from Early
Warnings (EEA, 2001)
1992
12
Why are early warnings often ignored?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Powerful economic/political stakes in status quo
Harm is largely externalised onto societies
Conservative science
Uncertainties lead to real and “manufactured”
doubt
Inadequate anticipatory research into hazards
Limited use of plausible scenarios
Fast technological change & slow long term effects
“Things are different now”*
*“This time its different : 8 Centuries of Financial Folly” Reinhart & Rogoff,2009.
13
Some insights on expanding knowledge:
Implications for impact analysis and research
Knowledge expands......
..as does complexity,uncertainty,
ignorance, and innovation.......
Research eventually shows that
Exposures expand over time…..
• producers, users, bystanders eg insulators, plantation
workers, passive smokers Asbestos/DBCP/Be
• Domestic: asbestos mesothelioma deaths from washing
overalls; children of asbestos workers; smokers families
• Environmental: asbestos; lead, DBCP in water; tobacco;
PCBs; benzene
• Consumers: BPA; nano;
• Next generations: Asbestos, radiations, Mercury, DES,
Tobacco, climate changes
• Target to non target species: Goucho & Bees; Polar bears &
fish from PCBs; oysters from TBT; fish from the Pill
& the Nature of Harm expands over
time….
• Asbestos: 1929 asbestosis; 1954 lung cancer; 1959
mesothelioma, 2012 throat & other cancers
• Tobacco: 1951 lung cancer; 2012 many cancers, foetal
harm; heart disease
• PCBs: 1960s bird reproduction;2012s neurological harm in
children; soil contamination
• Lead: 1979 brain damage in children; 2012 heart disease in
adults
• Minamata: 1950 brain damage & neurological; 1960s birth
defects 1990s childrens IQ & behavioural
• DES daughters: 1970 vaginal cancer; 1980s reproductive
problems; 2012 breast cancer; sons repro harm.
And harm is caused at lower &
lower levels of exposure…
• Asbestos
• Lead
• PCBs
• Mercury
• TBT
• Radiations
• BPA….etc
….often with, eventually, no known threshold…
eg Lead (EFSA, 2012).
* “safe” limits always come down…….with few exceptions
From “simple” science to complex
systems science
• From nature or nurture to nature and nurture (Leaded
petrol & IQ of children)
• From toxicology to endocrinology (BPA; oestradiol in
contraceptive pill)
• From linear dose/response to non linear DR
(Radiations; BPA)
• From smooth transitions in biological/ecological systems
to abrupt “tipping points”(Climate change; Fish stocks,
Ecosystems)
• From “dose makes the poison” to “timing of dose makes
poison”(DES;TBT)
• From single to multi-causality
19
Bees & Gaucho: search for the
single cause..of all impacts.. in
all regions… ?
“The Risk Assessment does not allow us to
demonstrate that maize seed dressing with
Gaucho can be solely responsible, at national
level, for all colony losses, behavioural troubles,
honey bee mortalities, or general decline in
honey production”
French Commission for Toxic Products , 2002:
see “Seed dressing systemic insecticides and
honeybees”, Maxim L. & van der Sluijs,J., Late
Lessons from Early Warnings, EEA 2013.
or embrace multi-causality….
“Gaucho…is of concern (on maize)
as one of the explanatory
elements for the weakening of
the bee populations observed
despite the ban of Gaucho in
sunflowers.”
Multifactor study of the Honeybee Colonies
Decline, French Scientific & Technical Committee,
2003, see Late Lessons, Bees chapter
Expect inconsistency from
variability
"Consistency in nature does not require that all, or
even a majority of studies find the same effect.
If all studies of lead showed the same relationship
between variables, one would be startled, perhaps
justifiably suspicious“
Needlemann (1995) ”Making Models of Real World events: the use and abuse of inference,
Neurotoxicology and Teratology, vol 17, no. 3.
“No evidence of Harm” is not the same as
“evidence of no harm”……
...because no relevant or reliable research is
available,
... or because of the limitations on what could
be known with existing scientific methods,
under complexity and multi-causality; and
.... long term ecological/biological effects
Research: how much on developing products v
on anticipating hazards?
EU Public Research
1994-2013
“Products”
“Protection”
Nanotechnology (20022013)
5 billion
112 million (2%)
Biotechnology(19942013)
7.5billion
273 million (4%)
Information
Communications
Technology/EMF(20072013)
19 billion
18 million (0.09%)
“Scientific Inertia” in chemicals
research
• There were 15,000 articles published between
2000-2009 on lead, mercury and DDT alone.
• Only 352 articles researched 8 of the 13
emerging, large production chemicals identified
as priorities by the US EPA, eg 1,3Dichlorobenzene.
• There were no articles on five other priority
chemicals.
What is an appropriate balance between research on
GMO food crops & on Agro-ecological science farming ?
“Approaches that promise building blocks
towards low input high output systems and
integrate historical knowledge and agroecological principles that use nature’s capacity,
should receive the highest priority for funding”.
Standing Committee on Agricultural Research,
2012, EC.
See “Hungary for Innovation: pathways from GM crops to
agroecology”, Quist D et al, Late Lessons, EEA, 2013.
Precaution, evidence for action, & innovation
The Precautionary Principles: Two
roles
• As a trigger for debates on future innovation
pathways in a water, energy and resourceconstrained world (eg France , GMOs ,19972005)
• As a legal and moral justification for more
timely actions on early warnings about
potential hazards.
‘The Irish Potato Famine
and Precaution-1846
"Are you to hesitate in averting famine which may
come, because it possibly may not come?
To consider and calculate how much
diarrhoea, and bloody flux, and dysentery, a
people can bear before it become necessary
for you to provide them with food?
Is it not better to err on the side of precaution
than to neglect it utterly?"
Sir Robert Peel, UK Parliament, 27 March 1846
39
EEA working definition of the
Precautionary Principle
“The PP provides justification for public policy actions in
situations of scientific complexity, uncertainty and
ignorance, where there may be a need to act in order to
avoid, or reduce, potentially serious or irreversible
threats to health or the environment, using appropriate
strengths of scientific evidence, and taking into account
the pros and cons of actions and inactions”.
”More or Less Precaution?”, Gee, Late Lessons , EEA, 2013
Some Strengths of Scientific Evidence….
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
42
Beyond all reasonable doubt (scientific causality &
criminal law)
Reasonable certainty (Int.Panel Climate Change , 2007)
Balance of probabilities/evidence (IPCC,2001; civil law)
Strong possibility (IARC on ELF ,2002; on RF 2011)
Reasonable grounds for concern(EU Communication on
PP)
Scientific suspicion of risk (Swedish Chemicals
Law,1975)
“Pertinent information” (WTO SPS justifying member
state actions to protect health
……which are appropriate for different purposes,
depending mainly on the costs of being wrong in
acting/not acting
Use of the Precautionary Principle
stimulates innovation by:
• bringing forward by years /decades the
innovations that were stimulated by the late
regulatory actions
• stimulating debate & action on wider
technological & social options for meeting
needs
• saving billions in damage costs that could have
been spent on innovation.
Well designed environmental taxes
/investment incentives stimulate
innovations
“Environmental tax reform (taxes on
pollution & resources with reduced taxes
on people +incentives for eco-innovation)
can deliver environmental objectives,
create additional jobs, trigger ecoinnovation”
Environmental tax reform in Europe: opportunities for eco-innovation”, EEA,
2011.
“Taxation, innovation, and the environment”, OECD, 2010
UK Environmental Regs benefit
Society
“where £1 is spent on regulation (mainly by
businesses and public authorities), there is a £3
return to society: mainly economic benefits to
business and the public, and environmental and
health benefits”.
Emerging Findings from Defra’s Regulation Assessment First update covering
2012 Published February 2015
Benefits of action expands over
time…
• CFCs: from ozone “hole” to Climate Change
benefits
• TBT: from local to global benefits
• PCBs: action to gain wildlife benefits brought
some health benefits
• Lead: action to protect children’s IQ reduced
some adult heart disease
Approaches to hazardous chemicals: upstream innovations?
or downstream ‘fingers in the dyke’?
Need for greater public engagement
• In hazard/risk/options/alternative assessments
• In applying the PP via “acceptable” levels of
protection for health & environments and
• in choosing appropriate strengths of evidence for
action
• In choosing strategic innovation pathways to
2050 on energy, agriculture (GMOs chapter)&
consumer product chemicals.
Thank you
[email protected]
All Late Lessons chapters from both vols
available from EEA website as PDFs
And Kindle for vol 2