Abstract
When in the past a new product, industry or agent was introduced into widespread use, there was little effort or felt need to predict or anticipate possible consequences to health that might be associated with that innovation. One wonders how the automobile might have been accepted if it had been known that its use would be at the price of 50,000 lives per year in the United States alone, nevermind the much larger number of injuries, both transient and permanent. We no longer are willing to accept new products on a “wait and see” basis. The public wants to know about such risks before hand. In an affluent society such as ours, the benefits of technology are no longer so irresistable that we are willing to overlook possible costs, particularly when those costs are to health and when such costs are likely to be subtle and overlooked unless assiduously examined.
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© 1984 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, The Hague
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Sagan, L.A. (1984). Problems in Health Measurements for the Risk Assessor. In: Ricci, P.F., Sagan, L.A., Whipple, C.G. (eds) Technological Risk Assessment. NATO ASI Series, vol 81. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6155-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6155-5_1
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