J.C. Hanekamp

University College Roosevelt · Science

Pope Francis unfolds his outlook on climate change in Laudato Si (2015) and Laudate Deum (2023). We reflect on both encyclicals, though we do not assess the scientific information on climate change as such. Instead, we examine the Pope’s use and understanding of models, and delve deeper into the overarching philosophy that sustains the encyclicals...

In dit rapport laat ik zien dat blootstelling aan synthetische gewasbeschermingsmiddelen per definitie niet kan worden gezien als een geïsoleerd fenomeen. Wij staan namelijk dagelijks bloot aan tienduizenden verschillende voedseleigen chemicaliën. Voedsel is onze grootste bron van chemicaliën, waaronder natuurlijke pesticiden. Deze plantenpesticide...

Dit schrijven is gemotiveerd door de manier waarop de Raad van State (RvS) het woord "significant" gebruikt in belangrijke stikstof-uitspraken. Dit woord wordt tientallen malen gebruikt in drie uitspraken die de onderzoekers van dit artikel hebben bestudeerd. Middels een uitgebreide analyse van de auteurs blijkt dat de RvS in haar stikstofuitsprake...

Van Kooten en De Bie hebben begin jaren tachtig van de vorige eeuw de Nederlandse taal met een angstaanjagend mooi neologisme verrijkt: doemdenken. Sinds de Tweede Wereldoorlog is doemdenken ons mentaal meubilair. Het is de angst voor het gewelddadige einde, uiteraard door ons toedoen, van de wereld en daarmee onszelf.

Het ministerie van Landbouw, Natuurbeheer en Voedselkwaliteit (LNV) bekostigde in de afgelopen jaren de nodige stikstofstudies. Had het ministerie nieuwe vragen en was zij op zoek naar nieuwe antwoorden? Of wilde het ministerie slechts bevestigd krijgen wat zij voor waar houdt in het stikstofdiscours? De prijs die het ministerie betaalde voor de st...

The use of hydrogen as a chemical substance versus an energy commodity drastically changes how a production and transport chain should or could be realised. Aside from a change in efficiency and cost considerations, the use of hydrogen as an energy commodity rather than a chemical substance also raises the question of how hazards and risks transfor...

We present a simple, superior method for estimating the upstream to downstream differences in nitrate and chlorine in a well studied catchment in the Netherlands, using data from the Water Board in Vechtstromen, from 1985 to 2018, in answer to a paper by Kaandorp et al. (2021). Agricultural sites are mostly downstream; nevertheless, less nitrate, a...

In dit document leggen ondergetekenden een aantal vragen voor aan de Raad van State (RvS) die betrekking hebben op uitspraken gedaan door dit college omtrent het stikstofbeleid. Deze vragen richten zich specifiek op het verstaan van het programma AERIUS(OPS), het gebruik van kritische depositiewaarden, het gebruik van het voorzorgbeginsel en het ve...

The RIVM responded to our paper“Criticizing AERIUS/OPS model performance”. We rebut those critiques below. In brief: RIVM agrees that OPS performs poorly in the short term, but believes it performs well over long periods. Yet they failed to address our demonstration on how averaging over these longer terms can cause spurious “good results.” That i...

We investigate the AERIUS/OPS model predictive skill. It has none compared to a simple “mean” model. Skill is the demonstrated superiority of one model over another, given specific verification mea- sures. OPS does not have skill compared to a simple “mean” model, which beats OPS using some measures. Further, the verification measures used are them...

In this contribution, we propose that ‘sound’ government policy should be characterised by a proportionate, integral vision with due consideration to tradeoffs between social costs and benefits. This principle also applies to government policy regarding the protection of workers from exposure to chemicals. It should be taken into account that havin...

Kort samengevat, kritische depositiewaarden (KDW) zijn niet geschikt voor beleid omdat: 1. de definitie van KDW veel te onnauwkeurig is; 2. de idee van 'depositie-schade' onduidelijk is; 3. KDW voortkomen uit een veelheid aan studies met zeer uiteenlopende dosis-respons methoden en eindpunten waardoor een bundeling tot één getal misleidend en onwet...

Nitrogen Critical Loads (NCL), as purported ecological dose-response outcomes for nitrogen deposition from anthropogenic sources, play a central role in environmental policies around the world. In the Netherlands, these NCL are used to assess, via calculations using the model AERIUS, to what extent NCL are exceeded for different habitats as a resul...

Setting scientific and policy standards that benchmark the risks and benefits of products intended for human consumption is of great consequence for industry, policymakers, and consumers. The safety of food products consumed is more often than not defined as chemical product safety, meaning that the food product is regarded as “safe” when man-made...

Governments are subjecting commercial communication concerning the relationship between foods/foodstuffs and human health to various types of evaluation, scrutiny, and control. In this process, legal scrutiny of commercial speech by courts of law is substituted by scrutiny of scientific bodies or panels with expertise in the field of assessing rese...

KDW zijn risicograadmeters met een niet-bestaande precisie en zijn, als enkelvoudige sturingsinstrumenten in natuurbeleid, zinloos. KDW zijn noch wetenschappelijk, noch beleidsmatig, noch maatschappelijk verdedigbaar. Gestelde natuur- en instandhoudingsdoelen zullen noodzakelijkerwijs nooit meetbaar gehaald worden indien hoofdzakelijk gestuurd word...

In this paper, we want to shed light on the demand for chemical and toxicological data growing ever more faster than science can supply and other aspects of assessing chemical risks, including the demand for ‘ever greater safety’. The treatise that follows is on the one hand rooted in well-established toxicological theory and on the other hand util...

In this paper, we want to shed light on the tradeoffs of chemicals regulation. We will discuss two types of tradeoffs: the social-economic impacts of regulation such as cost-induced fatalities and the tradeoffs between ‘old’ and ‘new’ chemicals, that is the established chemicals in industry and society deemed in need of replacement with ‘new’ chemi...

In February 2021, the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority came out with their risk assessment on for-maldehyde exposure from melamine crockery with bamboo fiber to especially young children. In this short commentary, I will critique their assessment of this type of food-contact material (FCM). The main flaws are at least: (i) abs...

Currently there is uncertainty among both regulators and citizens over the maximum safe daily dosage of particular vitamin and mineral food supplements. The European Commission has planned to harmonise maximum (and minimum) dosages for daily intake in the EU since 2002. However, consensus between the scientific community, national and EU authoritie...

The risks of formaldehyde-exposure to, particularly, toddlers (age 1-3 years) will be considered in the below-presented evaluation of BuRO-report TRCVWA/2021/768, as it forms the core of that report. Before we commence, however, it must be stated that the BuRO-report cannot be considered a proper risk assessment. Various aspects of a risk assessme...

The use of chloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 has received considerable attention. The recent intense focus on this application of chloroquine stimulated an investigation into the effects of chloroquine at low doses on highly biologically-diverse models and whether it may induce hormetic-biphasic dose response effects. The assessment revealed...

Deze methodologische review van drie recente adviezen van de Gezondheidsraad laat zien dat de Gezondheidsraad zich in deze adviezen niet houdt aan haar eigen leidraad voor de classificatie van carcinogene stoffen (2010), zich niet houdt aan algemene wetenschappelijke normen voor goed onderzoek en resultaten niet in op een transparante wijze en in d...

Low-dose radiation therapy (LD-RT) has historically been a successful treatment for pneumonia and is clinically established as an immunomodulating therapy for inflammatory diseases. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has elicited renewed scientific interest in LD-RT and multiple small clinical trials have recently corroborated the historical LD-RT findi...

Humans are exposed to a plethora of chemicals each day. As governments across the globe heavily invest into the regulation of chemicals, we need to consider if the right choices are made, how these are made, and what our scientific understanding is telling us now. Regulating chemical exposure requires a feasible perspective on the effects of exposu...

Na publicatie van zijn eerste adviesrapport op 5 maart 2020 brengt het Adviescollege Meten en Berekenen Stikstof nu zijn eindrapport naar buiten. Taak van het adviescollege was om te beoordelen of de huidige meet- en rekensystematiek voor stikstofemissie en -depositie voldoende wetenschappelijke onderbouwing biedt voor het stikstofbeleid. In de eer...

Hydroxychloroquine, een oud en goedkoop malariamedicijn, kwam in opspraak nadat Donald J. Trump zich ermee begon te bemoeien. De Amerikaanse president sprak over een veelbelovend medicijn wat misschien levensreddend kan zijn. Hydroxychloroquine is nu onderdeel van een vurig wetenschappelijk, publiek en politiek debat. Er heerst veel onduidelijkheid...

Het Adviescollege Meten en Berekenen Stikstof is in december 2019 begonnen aan de eerste fase van zijn opdracht om advies te geven over de wetenschappelijke kwaliteit van de Nederlandse systematiek voor het meten van en rekenen aan stikstofverbindingen ter onderbouwing van het (toekomstig) beleid van de Rijksoverheid en provincies. Het uitgangspunt...

De ammoniakdepositie op natuurgebieden (het doel van het beleid) wordt niet gemeten. Depositie wordt op een indirecte rekenkundige manier geschat: door de emissies bij het bemesten te modelleren; de emissies uit stallen te modelleren; de luchtconcentraties te meten in natuurgebieden. De uitkomsten van deze modellen en metingen komen samen in rekenm...

Van 24 augustus tot 10 oktober 2019 is het mogelijk om te reageren op de klimaatplannen van de overheid. Een con-sultatieronde dus die het mogelijk moet maken voor burgers, bedrijven, maatschappelijke organisaties om commentaar te leveren op voorgenomen beleid. Op de website van de consultatie staan enkele introducerende alinea's die inzicht moeten...

We propose two simple fixes to the Ryden and McNeil ammonia flux model. These are necessary to prevent estimates from becoming unphysical, which very often happens and which has not yet been noted in the literature. The first fix is to constrain the limits of certain of the model's parameters; without this limit, estimates from the model are seen t...

In the paper industry, polyaminopolyamide-epichlorohydrin (PAE) resins are the principal commercial products, introduced in the 1950s, used to manufacture wet-strengthened paper, that is paper that holds it strength despite being wet. Nowadays, these wet-strengthened products are used in liquid packaging board (for milk and juice and other beverage...

We investigate trend identification in the LML and MAN atmospheric ammonia data. The signals are mixed in the LML data, with just as many positive, negative, and no trends found. The start date for trend identification is crucial, with the trends claimed changing sign and significance depending on the start date. The MAN data is calibrated to the L...

De resultaten van ons vergelijkend onderzoek laten zien dat de Nederlandse bodemnormen voor de functie ‘wonen’ voor veel stoffen simpelweg veel te streng zijn: de grenswaardes komen dan grosso modo overeen met blootstelling van minder dan een procent van de blootstelling via andere routes zoals voedsel of soms zelfs van minder dan een procent van d...

Het voorzorgprincipe is zoiets als Moederdag of windenergie. Je kunt er eigenlijk niet tegen zijn. Wie is er immers tegen het voorkómen van schade, ongelukken of rampen? Maar deze voor- stelling van zaken is misleidend. In werkelijkheid brengt de toe- passing van het voorzorgprincipe hoge sociaal-maatschappelijke en economische kosten met zich en k...

Of het nu gaat om klimaatverandering, fijn stof of giftige chemicaliën, steeds weer staan er ‘pro- feten’ op die ons waarschuwen voor het einde der tijden, in ieder geval voor het einde van de mensheid. Waar hun oudtestamentische voorgangers zich beriepen op Gods woord, beroepen hun hedendaagse epigonen zich op de Wetenschap. Die zou hebben bewezen...

‘Since all human beings have to deal with existential experiences of resistance [suffering, death, guilt, meaninglessness, and the like], the issue is not “Shall we have a view of life?” but “Which view of life should we choose?” because we have to make a choice (consciously or unconsciously) no matter what. If we do not vote with our head, we vote...

Een vlot en prikkelend geschreven historisch essay: de Klimaatparadox: De crux van het verhaal is relatief eenvoudig. De klimaatcrisis is een mensenprobleem, dat wil zeggen: teveel mensen op deze planeet. Van Druenen zegt het als volgt: "We investeren in klimaatbeheer en medemenselijkheid, maar voeden daarmee het monster dat eruit voortkomt, het mo...

This article strongly supports the Environmental Protection Agency proposal to make significant changes in their cancer risk assessment principles and practices by moving away from the use of the linear nonthreshold (LNT) dose–response as the default model. An alternate approach is proposed based on model uncertainty which integrates the most scien...

The precautionary principle has been invoked to support stringent European food law. By its nature, the principle is particularly relevant to food security. This chapter discusses how precaution has been applied in EU food law generally, and finds that its application has been both controversial and selective. We then turn to two specific cases in...

De metingen van het belangrijkste agrarische ammoniak meetstation (RIVM-meetstation Vredepeel op het terrein van Wageningen UR Plant Research) in het Landelijk Meetnet Luchtkwaliteit (LML) worden vervuild door een directe lokale bron, een pluimveehouderij, die te dicht op het meetstation staat.

De Unie van Waterschappen is voornemens een nieuw belastingstelsel in te voeren. Daartoe heeft haar Commissie Aanpassing Belastingstelsel (CAB) ondermeer onderzocht hoe het beginsel ‘de vervuiler betaalt’ beter kan worden toegepast op de landbouw. De CAB komt tot het voorstel een forfaitaire heffing in te voeren voor de uit- en afspoeling van stiks...

Landbouw, wetenschap, en het ‘gewenste’ resultaat. Landbouw ligt maatschappelijk gezien onder een vergrootglas en komt daardoor vaak negatief in het nieuws. Bijna even vaak is dat niet terecht. Voor een deel omdat de huidige journalistieke mores resultaten van wetenschappelijk onderzoek voor waar aanneemt. Voor een deel omdat wetenschappelijk onder...

Listing scientific failures with extensive societal consequences will always include the thalidomide tragedy. Thalidomide seemed a miracle drug but later appeared to have teratogenic activity, i.e., causing birth defects to children of mothers who took this sleeping drug. Since not all animal species in which the drug was tested displayed this tera...

The estimation of toxicity is always expressed as a chance, a chance of harm. It is therefore crucial that society understands the word ‘chance’. In identifying threats it should be realized that topics that arise from pressure groups or legislature are prone to political drivers and have less to do with epistemic drivers of science. Journalists pl...

The assessment and management of risks of exposure to certain chemicals are hugely important. Obviously, such an assessment needs to encapsulate real-world situations with a margin of safety to ensure “everybody’s” safety once exposed, including the vulnerable young, old, pregnant, and individuals with a compromised immune system. In a nutshell, ri...

A compound can only elicit its toxicity when there is exposure to that compound via inhalation, skin contact, or oral administration. Following absorption (A) and distribution (D) within the human body, compounds can be metabolized (M) and eventually eliminated (E). Protection against toxic compounds first of all is established by simply preventing...

The dose–response relationship between exposure to chemicals and observed effects is essential as it expresses the well-known empirical observation that different dose levels result in different effects in organisms such as humans. Very roughly: “small” doses—no or small effects; “large” doses—large effects. And of course, many intermediate doses a...

The most toxic compound in our global environment is oxygen. The English theologian and chemist Priestley discovered oxygen in the 18th century. Not only the discovery of oxygen was a scientific struggle, also during evolution the development of life on earth as a whole was a fight with and against oxygen. Life had to adapt to oxygen. Oxygen has an...

Michael Polanyi was one of the world’s leading physical chemists in the first half of the 20th century, and a leading philosopher of science in the second half of the same century. His experimental and theoretical work on gas adsorption by solids (activated carbon to begin with), on which he first published during the Great War (1914–18), is still...

Chemistry is all around us. The smell of a bouquet of flowers, the taste of an aged whisky, the curative merits of an antibiotic, the restorative qualities of a simple meal all break down into individual chemical components to which we are exposed willing or unwillingly. The “natural” and the “synthetic” of that chemistry are in our minds clearly d...

Toxicology is without doubt the oldest scientific discipline. Ancient people depended for their livelihood on the consumption of plants and therefore on their everyday knowledge of plant toxicities. Which plants were dangerous to eat and which were safe? Plants are armed with a wide array of toxic compounds. It forms an effective way of the plant t...

In the Netherlands, there is a vigorous debate on ammonia emissions, atmospheric concentrations and deposition between stakeholders and research institutions. In this article, we scrutinise some aspects of the ammonia discourse. In particular, we want to improve the understanding of the methodology for handling experimentally determined ammonia emi...

De focus van onderliggend onderzoek ligt op ammoniakemissies bij bemesting en op trends in atmosfeer- concentraties. Daartoe hebben we van de Wageningen University & Research (WUR) enkele meetreeksen van bemestingsproeven ontvangen (overigens zonder vermelding van spreiding van meetdata en meetonzekerheid) tezamen met het rekenmodel om die metingen...

Toxicology: What Everyone Should Know is an essential reference for anyone looking for an entry into this fascinating field of study. This innovative book describes important discoveries in toxicology through the ages, explores their historical and sociological impacts, and shows how they still influence recent, state-of-the-art developments. In ad...

In this forum contribution, the planetary boundaries discourse put forward by W. Steffen and colleagues is scrutinized. These boundaries are defined as a 'safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes that regulate the stability of the Earth system'. Without reference to specific empirical shortcomings, it is shown...

Recognising the importance of science to climate policies, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (the ‘Paris Agreement’ or ‘Agreement’) stipulates that ‘an effective and progressive response to the urgent threat of climate change’ should be based on ‘the best available scientific knowledge.’ The terms ‘best available scientific knowledge’ or ‘best...

This paper proposes a new cancer risk assessment strategy and methodology that optimizes population-based responses by yielding the lowest disease/tumor incidence across the entire dose continuum. The authors argue that the optimization can be achieved by integrating two seemingly conflicting models; i.e., the linear no-threshold (LNT) and hormetic...

Hoe leggen we straks aan onze kinderen uit dat we de Grondwet en de rechtsstaat hebben verkwanseld? Dat we de rechter hebben toegestaan het overheidsbeleid te bepalen op grond van veronderstelde "wetenschappelijke" noodzaak. Hoe leggen we uit dat de wetgever en uitvoerende macht de slaven zijn geworden van een door de rechterlijke macht aangestuurd...

This paper proposes that generic cancer risk assessments be based on the integration of the Linear Non-Threshold (LNT) and hormetic dose-responses since optimal hormetic beneficial responses are estimated to occur at the dose associated with a 10(-4) risk level based on the use of a LNT model as applied to animal cancer studies. The adoption of the...

In this admittedly eclectic study, a number of topics come together that focus on the so-called precautionary culture, very concisely the ideal of a harm-free society. The precautionary outlook, which is usually portrayed with the aid of the precautionary principle that states that where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of...

Abstract In this contribution we show that current scientific methodologies used in nutrition science and by regulatory agencies, such as the randomised control trial, limit our understanding of nutrition and health as they are to crude to capture the subtle pleiotropic nature of most nutrients. Thereby, regulatory agencies such as the European Foo...

The antibiotic chloramphenicol (CAP) is banned from food production. Besides being a medicinal product, CAP is also a natural product, produced by Streptomyces Venezuelae. The lack of scientific data hampers setting of an Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI). Consequently, a maximum residue limit (MRL) in food could not be established. This was then trans...

In this contribution, we show that current scientific methodologies used in nutrition science and by regulatory agencies, such as the randomized control trial, limit our understanding of nutrition and health as they are to crude to capture the subtle pleiotropic nature of most nutrients. Thereby, regulatory agencies such as the European Food Safety...

Referring to the Golden Ratio (i.e. expressed in the Fibonacci sequence) in nature and art, we conclude that toxicology knows its own Golden Ration, namely linearity. The latter seems imposed on pharmaco-toxicological processes that in fact show far more complexity than simple linearity could hope to elucidate. Understanding physiological and pharm...

Europe's push towards a single harmonised market that offers information on the benefits of foods is encapsulated in Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006, the Nutrition and Health Claims Regulation (NHCR). The NHCR will be the main focus of our contribution. Our contention is that this regulation not only stifles scientific research, limiting it to the rel...

This report is an assembly of multiple analyses on the (bio)chemical behaviour of chlorpropham in soils and groundwater. It also contains reflections on this and related issues between the Netherlands National Institute for Public Health and the Environment and myself.

In our contribution we concisely question and answer some basic notions on food, health, and safety. We show that for some food components such as flavonoids, a whole range of small toxicological effects that have been uncovered the last decade on the whole confer benefits to human health. This development underlines the notion that health is adapt...

Responding to public fears and the loss of confidence in the aftermath of several food safety crises in the 1990s and 2000s, more and more regulatory laws have increasingly been affected by the precautionary principle. To clarify how those developments can have adverse consequences, we discuss two very different cases. First, at the molecular level...

Met het duurzame perspectief is een seculiere eschatologie in het leven geroepen die geen tegenspraak duldt. De duurzame mens kan, zo is de dwingende overtuiging, de wereld herscheppen die tot in lengte van eeuwen mee kan. Het geduld om stapje voor stapje de samenleving te veranderen hebben we niet. Het CDA zal zich niet moeten laten leiden door ut...

In this contribution we will show that research in the field of toxicology, pharmacology and physiology is by and large characterised by a pendulum swing of which the amplitudes represent risks and benefits of exposure. As toxicology usually tests at higher levels than the populace routinely is exposed to, it reverts to mostly linear extrapolative...

Macro-engineering has purposely developed, and is currently applying, proved construction and operation technologies and modern management techniques to effectively connect the various natural and anthropogenic components of certain Earth-biosphere regions. “Industrial metabolism” is an apt metaphor to describe the mobilization and control of mater...

The zero-tolerance precautionary approach to ban certain antibiotics from food has proven unworkable as a result of continuing analytical progress. New regulatory standards on chemical residues do not adequately address the situation, leaving technical progress, not toxicological relevance, to determine undesirable levels. As new chemical substance...

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

ChemInform is a weekly Abstracting Service, delivering concise information at a glance that was extracted from about 100 leading journals. To access a ChemInform Abstract of an article which was published elsewhere, please select a “Full Text” option. The original article is trackable via the “References” option.

Precaution is regarded as the paradigmatic approach to uncertainty. Either proposed as a form of radical prevention or, as put forward recently, as an innovative normative procedure to handle uncertainties in advancing human activities, it nevertheless finds its source in Cold War research dealing with the uncertainties of a potential nuclear war....