Safe Enough? Managing Risk and Regulation

Attitudes to risk have changed as advances in medicine, sanitation, and agriculture brought dramatic improvements in life expectancy throughout the last century. Risks that were once accepted are now intolerable. Zealous anti-risk activists have heightened our intolerance for small risks and their campaigns often promote bans of useful products or new regulation to reduce the "hazards" that they have identified. This book shows the importance of considering the costs of regulation and of basing decisions about regulation on sound science and economics. It helps us to struggle with the difficult question: how safe is safe enough?