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Late lessons from early warnings:the precautionary principle 1896–2000
Editorial team:
Poul Harremoës (Chairman)David Gee (EEA editor)Malcolm MacGarvin (Executive editor)Andy Stirling (Editor)Jane Keys (Editor)Brian Wynne (Editor)Sofia Guedes Vaz (EEA editor)
Project managers:
David Gee and Sofia Guedes VazEuropean Environment Agency
Environmental issue reportNo 22
 
2Late lessons from early warnings: the precautionary principle 1896–2000
Layout: Brandenborg a/s
Note
The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the official opinions of theEuropean Commission or other European Communities institutions. Neither the EuropeanEnvironment Agency nor any person or company acting on the behalf of the Agency isresponsible for the use that may be made of the information contained in this report.
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic ormechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage retrievalsystem without the permission in writing from the copyright holder. For rights of translationor reproduction please contact EEA project manager Ove Caspersen (address informationbelow).A great deal of additional information on the European Union is available on the Internet.It can be accessed through the Europa server (http://europa.eu.int).Cataloguing data can be found at the end of this publication.Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001ISBN 92-9167-323-4© EEA, Copenhagen, 2001European Environment AgencyKongens Nytorv 6DK-1050 Copenhagen KDenmarkTel: (45) 33 36 71 00Fax: (45) 33 36 71 99E-mail: eea@eea.eu.intInternet: http://www.eea.eu.int
 
Preface
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Preface
To know and not to know.To act or not to act...?
The task of the European Environment  Agency (EEA) is to provide information of direct use for improving decision-making andpublic participation. We often provideinformation in situations of scientificuncertainty, in which the precautionary principle, enshrined in the Treaty of theEuropean Union, is increasingly relevant.The growing innovative powers of scienceseem to be outstripping its ability to predict the consequences of its applications, whilst the scale of human interventions in natureincreases the chances that any hazardousimpacts may be serious and global. It istherefore important to take stock of past experiences, and learn how we can adapt tothese changing circumstances and improveour work, particularly in relation to theprovision of information and theidentification of early warnings
.Late lessons from early warnings 
is about thegathering of information on the hazards of human economic activities and its use intaking action to better protect both theenvironment and the health of the speciesand ecosystems that are dependent on it, andthen living with the consequences.The report is based on case studies. Theauthors of the case studies, all experts intheir particular field of environmental,occupational and consumer hazards, wereasked to identify the dates of early warnings,to analyse how this information was used, ornot used, in reducing hazards, and todescribe the resulting costs, benefits andlessons for the future.The lessons they drew from their histories were then distilled into twelve ‘late lessons’by the editorial team, under the guidance of the EEA Scientific Committee. In a separateEEA publication some implications of thelate lessons for the policy process andassociated information flows will be furtherexplored.The precautionary principle is not just anissue for the European Union (EU): itspotential impact on trade means that itsapplication can have global repercussions.The current dialogue between the EU andthe United States on the use and applicationof precaution is partly affected by confusionabout the meaning of terms used in thedebate. This report should contribute to agreater and shared understanding about past decisions on hazardous technologies andtherefore, we hope, to improved transatlanticagreement about future decisions. It may alsohelp the dialogue
within 
both the EU and theUnited States, where there are healthy debates about the pros and cons of applyingthe precautionary principle.That we have all acted too late in many areasis now well known. Over the next 50 years we will see some thousands of extra skin cancersas today’s children grow up exposed to thehigher levels of ultraviolet radiationpenetrating the normally protective ozonelayer through the ‘hole’ created by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and othersynthetic chemicals. Over the same periodmany thousands of Europeans will die fromone of the most painful and terminal of cancers, mesothelioma, caused by theinhalation of asbestos dust. In both cases
 
 we were taken by surprise: the hazards of thesebeneficial technologies were not ‘knownabout’ until it was too late to stop irreversibleimpacts. Both phenomena had such longlatent periods between first exposures andlate effects that ‘pipelines’ of unstoppableconsequences, decades long, were set inplace before actions could have been takento stop further exposures.The first reports of injuries from radiation were made as early as 1896 (hence the title of the report). The first clear and credible early  warning about asbestos came two years laterin 1898. A similar signal for action on CFCscame in 1974, though some may argue that important clues were missed earlier. Elevenother well-known hazards are dealt with inthis report. We invite the reader to judge whether, as in the cases of radiation, asbestosand CFCs, the early warnings could have ledto earlier actions to reduce hazards, at alower overall cost to society.The costs of preventive actions are usually tangible, clearly allocated and often short term, whereas the costs of failing to act areless tangible, less clearly distributed andusually longer term, posing particular
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