"I know that you have made the point over the years that well known hazards of ingredients of some art products are ignored based on optimistic assumptions about the likely exposures during the use of the art products. So the availability of data is not the only factor impacting the public perception of chemical risks.
The incorrect exposure assumption in the art materials labeling law is only one small item in my long list of kvetches.
"So my overall point is that public perception of risk is not likely to be changed by increased toxicity data."
I hope we are not saying that we shouldn't test for chemical toxicity because it won't change people's behavior. How about we try it and see? Realize I come from a time when asbestos, based on its acute data, was labeled as "nontoxic" and regularly in children's and adult's products. That didn't change until 1988 a few years after your plutonium example.
For just one example, without that asbestos toxicity data, the connection between asbestos and asbestos-contaminated industrial talcs* would not have been made and every school would still be using them in their ceramics program. Now I only find it occasionally (two in 2017 and one this year in a university building I'm consulting on for renovation). I've been retained in 23 lawsuits for dead potters and ceramic workers who were exposed to this same talc, some of them in high schools and universities. All 23 resulted in either jury awards or good settlements. The first one for a man exposed at Harvard during his art classes and during subsequent work for a few years as a studio potter 25 years earlier was in 2006. The mine was closed in 2009. So I know that asbestos data has saved lives.
While there is no massive shift in public perception, every toxicity data point will be used by someone, somewhere to switch to safer product, file a lawsuit, write an article, or reformulate a product. Looking at the glaciers it might not appear they are melting, but some are actually gone. But it takes the sunshine to do it.
I'm asking for the light here.
Monona
* These are not cosmetic talcs where the number of fibers is very low. These are industrial talcs with much higher percentages of several types of asbestos.
-----Original Message-----
From: Ralph Stuart <ralph**At_Symbol_Here**RSTUARTCIH.ORG>
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**Princeton.EDU
Sent: Sun, Jan 30, 2022 10:45 am
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Chemical exposure and toxicity
> >Ethanol and plutonium? Really? Lots of data on both.
Yes, but I was thinking about the public perception of the hazards of these chemicals, which is not well connected to the data available, but rather generated by discussions of speculative exposure scenarios.
An example of this is when I was starting out in EHS in the 1980=E2=80™s, plutonium was famous as "the most toxic chemical in the world". This designation was based on a very specific scenario - a nuclear war that spread plutonium dust internationally, leading to many lung cancers as the beta emitter were inhaled. We don't need a nuclear explosion to expose the global population to ethanol through many different exposure routes and at many different levels. However, the public perception of those risks have led to quite different regulatory schemes for those two chemicals.
I know that you have made the point over the years that well known hazards of ingredients of some art products are ignored based on optimistic assumptions about the likely exposures during the use of the art products. So the availability of data is not the only factor impacting the public perception of chemical risks. So my overall point is that public perception of risk is not likely to be changed by increased toxicity data.
I believe that the original question (Is ""There are many tens of thousands of chemicals in use, but only a small percentage have been tested for toxicity." true?) is intended to raise students' awareness that the public's assumption that "they wouldn't let me use this if it was dangerous" is not well-founded.
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