 |  Environmental Science: A Global Concern, 7/e William P. Cunningham,
University of Minnesota
Mary Ann Cunningham,
Vassar College
Barbara Woodworth Saigo,
St. Cloud State University
Environmental Health and Toxicology
Chapter OverviewWe all want to live in a safe environment. Toxicology attempts to determine what is unsafe and at what levels. Toxicological information is extremely useful in assessing everything, from what we can safely put in our food, to which substances we must avoid releasing into the environment, to which toxic materials our bodies can deal with at low levels. Determining what is safe and what is not is a far more difficult question to answer than you might expect.
The first problem is the technical determination of how much of which substances can cause damage. Another is determining how safe we want to be. It is not a simple yes or no answer. Rather, it is a continuum from more safe to less safe. What is safe for one person may trigger disease in another. Practically speaking, toxicology seeks to assign probabilities of safeness.
Our perception of relative safety adds another complication. We seem willing to accept a higher risk of death for things that we are familiar with or feel are under our own control. We are much more fearful of risks we do not understand. Either way, our perception of risk is often far different from the actual risk. Nevertheless, these questions are so important to our health that they must be answered as best we can.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education