Abstract
The establishment of standards for tolerable, or acceptable risks in connection with exposure to noxious agents might seem to be exclusively a matter of sound scientific methodology in estimating the probabilities for damages and reducing the uncertainties involved in extrapolating from the known into the unknown. However, the setting of standards for acceptable risk is not just a matter of probabilities and degrees of uncertainty. Acceptability is a normative notion and involves a number of factors having to do with values and human autonomy that will be discussed in the following. Whoever makes the decision, whether an individual, a group, an industrial firm or a public institution or agency, there is a number of norms and values that come into the picture, such as consent, distributional justice, and many others that will be discussed in this chapter. Some of these normative factors have been included in laws and regulations in various ways that often differ from country to country, while others are not laid down in law, but remain as ethical considerations that any decision maker should take into account.
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Streffer, C. et al. (2004). Ethical Aspects of Risk. In: Wütscher, F. (eds) Low Dose Exposures in the Environment. Wissenschaftsethik und Technikfolgenbeurteilung, vol 23. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-08422-9_2
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