Keith Shrader

• University of Notre Dame

Philosophers, policymakers, and scientists have long asserted that ecological science – and especially notions of homeostasis, balance, or stability – help to determine environmental values and to supply imperatives for environmental ethics and policy. We argue that this assertion is questionable. There are no well developed general ecological theo...

Background Understanding, characterizing, and quantifying human exposures to environmental chemicals is critical to protect public health. Exposure assessments are key to determining risks to the general population and for specific subpopulations given that exposures differ between groups. Exposure data are also important for understanding where in...

The manufacture and production of industrial chemicals continues to increase, with hundreds of thousands of chemicals and chemical mixtures used worldwide, leading to widespread population exposures and resultant health impacts. Low-wealth communities and communities of color often bear disproportionate burdens of exposure and impact; all compounde...

Does representative hazardous-waste-site testing tend to follow or to violate government technical guidance? This is an important question, because following such guidance promotes reliable risk analysis, adequate remediation, and environmental-justice and -health protection. Yet only government documents typically address this question, usually on...

Scientific data are almost nonexistent regarding the health-protectiveness of most hazardous-waste-site remediation. Given this data-gap, recently the World Health Organization (WHO) urged scientists to develop methods of “cost-efficient health surveillance” of toxics’ cleanups, including any “illegal operations”. Following WHO, this article’s impo...

The authors would like to make the following corrections (1 and 2) to this paper [...]

Because part of the text was unintentionally omitted, the first paragraph under Section 2.2.4.3. on p. 13 was jumbled and incomplete when it was published [...]

Health misinformation can cause harm if regulators or private remediators falsely claim that a hazardous facility is safe. This misinformation especially threatens the health of children, minorities, and poor people, disproportionate numbers of whom live near toxic facilities. Yet, perhaps because of financial incentives, private remediators may us...

Most hazardous-waste sites are located in urban areas populated by disproportionate numbers of children, minorities, and poor people who, as a result, face more severe pollution threats and environmental-health inequalities. Partly to address this harm, in 2017 the United Nations unanimously endorsed the New Urban Agenda, which includes redevelopin...

Nearly 25 percent of US children live within 2 km of toxic-waste sites, most of which are in urban areas. They face higher rates of cancer than adults, partly because the dominant contaminants at most US hazardous-waste sites include genotoxic carcinogens, like trichloroethylene, that are much more harmful to children. The purpose of this article i...

Two of the most prevalent Superfund-site contaminants are carcinogenic solvents PCE (perchloroethylene) and TCE (trichloroethylene). Because their cleanup is difficult and costly, remediators have repeatedly falsified site-cleanup data, as Tetra Tech apparently did recently in San Francisco. Especially for difficult-to-remediate toxins, this paper...

This article shows why it is important to do normative or practical philosophy of science, especially philosophy of science that criticizes and evaluates contemporary use of scientific methods to analyze welfare-affecting societal problems. The article (1) introduces the scientific, ethical, and social problem of environmental injustice—disproporti...

Chapter 4 "Economic Growth, Human Development, and Welfare" of the 2018 Report of the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP). Mission of the IPSP: The International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) will harness the competence of hundreds of experts about social issues and will deliver a report addressed to all social actors, movements, organ...

Neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism affect one-eighth of all U.S. newborns. Yet scientists, accessing the same data and using Bradford-Hill guidelines, draw different conclusions about the causes of these disorders. They disagree about the pesticide-harm hypothesis, that typical U.S. prenatal pesticide exposure can cause neurodevelopmental...

What should government do with a former nuclear-reprocessing site, contaminated with hundreds of thousands of curies of shallow-buried radioactive waste, including high-level waste, some in only plastic bags and cardboard boxes, all sitting on a rapidly eroding plateau? Some of the waste will remain lethal for millions of years, and a contaminated...

Of 188 government-monitored air toxics, diesel particulate matter (DPM) causes seven times more cancer than all the other 187 air toxics combined, including benzene, lead, and mercury. Yet, DPM is the only air toxic not regulated more stringently under the Clean Air Act, as a hazardous air pollutant (HAP). One reason is that regulators use flawed s...

For 6,000 years, humans have known about smelter hazards. Yet these metals threats continue. Why? This commentary provides one preliminary answer. It (1) summarizes the history of smelter pollution and (2) suggests that at least 3 problems-especially flawed smelter-polluter science-allow continuing health threats. It (3) illustrates this flawed sci...

Use of commercial nuclear fission causes massive environmental injustice (EIJ), both under normal conditions and after accidents. Some of the key victims of this injustice are children, poor people, radiation workers, and future generations. This chapter (1) provides a brief overview of the Fukushima, Japan nuclear accident, and (2) shows why child...

Dozens of developed countries massively subsidize biomass-crop growing/incineration, touting it as clean, renewable, and helping to alleviate climate change. Using a case study of a contemporary, state-of-the-art facility to incinerate Miscanthus-giganteus biomass, this article shows that bioenergy projects are (1) not clean, given overwhelming par...

Using illegitimate scientific, especially economic, claims to trump ethical demands for renewable energy, many government/industry leaders say nuclear fission is needed to address climate change. They allege that because fission is (1) low-carbon; (2) inexpensive; (3) currently available (whereas renewables like wind and solar-photovoltaic are not)...

Although adaptation and proper biological functioning require developmental programming, pollutant interference can cause developmental toxicity or DT. This commentary assesses whether it is ethical for citizens/physicians/scientists to allow avoidable DT. Using conceptual, economic, ethical, and logical analysis, the commentary assesses what major...

Although US law protects environmental-justice (EJ) whistleblowers from retaliation when they are federalgovernment, private-financial-sector, or private-environment-related-sector employees, university EJ scientists who blow the whistle on polluters have little federal protection if these polluters retaliate by charging them with research miscondu...

Special-interest polluters often file research-misconduct (RM) charges against scientists whose research suggests needed pollutant regulation. This article argues that U.S. RM regulations are flawed in requiring RM assessors/experts/accused, but not accusers, to reveal possible conflicts of interest (COI) that could affect RM allegations. It (1) su...

Why do classic biostatistical studies, alleged to provide causal explanations of effects, often fail? This article argues that in statistics-relevant areas of biology—such as epidemiology, population biology, toxicology, and vector ecology—scientists often misunderstand epistemic constraints on use of the statistical-significance rule (SSR). As a r...

Because Japan has few minorities, one might expect that its environmental-injustice (EI) threats are rare. This article suggests they are not rare. It also shows that prima-facie evidence for EI arises not only because of siting noxious or polluting facilities in poor or minority communities, but also because of racism and classism that cause disas...

This chapter focuses on addressing the problems faced by current climate policy and attempts to show how equitable it would be to increase commercial nuclear energy in an effort to help address climate change. This type of assessment, as is argued here, must not only focus on what is wrong with current climate policy but also on proposing solutions...

This book uses market data, scientific studies, and ethical analyses to show why we should pursue green energy and conservation, and not nuclear fission, to address global climate change. It also uncovers why the many problems with atomic power, and the many benefits of green energy and conservation, have been concealed from the public. Chapter 1 r...

In recent months, there has been considerable discussion in the scientific community of the need for increased transparency, openness, and data access [Dealing with Data special section, 11 February, “Making data maximally available,” B. Hanson et al. , Editorial, p. [649][1], and “Climate

One way to do socially relevant investigations of science is through conceptual analysis of scientific terms used in special-interest science (SIS). SIS is science having welfare-related consequences and funded by special interests, e.g., tobacco companies, in order to establish predetermined conclusions. For instance, because the chemical industry...

In 1996 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences published a landmark volume, Understanding Risk, that mandated full public participation in environmental risk assessment, characterization, and management-particularly in environmental-justice (EJ) cases. It argued that because all types of risk decisions are laden with value judgments, experts alone o...

A stalled nuclear waste program, and possible increase in wastes, beg for social science input into acceptable solutions.

Merck suppressed data on harmful effects of its drug Vioxx, and Guidant suppressed data on electrical flaws in one of its heart-defibrillator models. Both cases reveal how financial conflicts of interest can skew biomedical research. Such conflicts also occur in electric-utility-related research. Attempting to show that increased atomic energy can...

The mining, fuel enrichment-fabrication, and waste-management stages of the US commercial nuclear- fuel cycle have been documented as involving environmental injustices affecting, respectively, indigenous uranium miners, nuclear workers, and minorities and poor people living near radioactive-waste storage facilities. After surveying these three env...

Conservation planning is only as good as the science on which it relies. This paper evaluates the science underlying the least-cost-path model, developed by Meegan and Maehr (2002), for the Florida panther, Puma concolor coryi. It also assesses the resulting claim that private lands in central Florida are desirable for panther colonization (Maehr e...

Ethics requires good science. Many scientists, government leaders, and industry representatives support tripling of global-nuclear-energy capacity on the grounds that nuclear fission is "carbon free" and "releases no greenhouse gases." However, such claims are scientifically questionable (and thus likely to lead to ethically questionable energy cho...

Those who wish to deny some instance of environmental injustice often attempt to place inappropriate evidentiary burdens on scientists who show disproportionate pollution effects on vulnerable populations. One such evidentiary standard is the epidemiological-evidence rule (EER). According to EER, legitimate causal inferences about pollution-related...

As illustrated by the case of ethanol, claim H is that, for some biological endpoints, low-dose toxins and carcinogens exhibit hormesis, a beneficial or adaprive response characterized by biphasic dose responses and resulting from compensatory biological processes following an initial disruption in homeostasis. From this uncontroversial claim H, ho...

After surveying the two main paradigms for ecological risk assessment, this commentary discusses two mistakes often associated with the paradigm based on ecosystem health. These are the beard fallacy and the pragmatist fallacy. The argument is that if you really learn from experience with quantitative (human health) risk assessment, you can avoid i...

Pollution kills hundreds of thousands of people annually. This book shows why this environmental epidemic continues. Campaign contributors, lobbyists, and special interests often control information by capturing media and even science itself. Yet this book puts the blame - and the solution - on the shoulders of ordinary citizens. Calling for a new...

Arguing that the 2006 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) human-subjects rule allows use of unethical third-party research (on pregnant women and children) in setting pesticide regulations, this article first (a) provides a brief history of U.S. pesticide regulation, particularly regarding childhood safety. Next it (b) outlines ethical and scient...

In the United States, regulatory standards allow workers to be exposed to ionizing radiation that can cause 1 additional cancer fatality per 400 workers per year. Because radiation-dose limits cover only single sources (e.g., a nuclear plant) or exposure classes (workplace, medical, or public) and are defined for average occupational exposure, work...

While their strength, electrical, optical, or magnetic properties are expected to contribute a trillion dollars in global commerce before 2015, nanomaterials also appear to pose threats to human health and safety. Nanotoxicology is the study of these threats. Do nanomaterial benefits exceed their risks? Should all nanomaterials be regulated? Curren...

To the degree that citizens have participated in, or derived benefits from, social institutions that have helped cause serious, life-threatening, or rights-threatening environmental injustice (EIJ), this article argues that they have duties either to stop their participation in these institutions or to compensate for it by helping to reform them. (...

Comparing alternative scientific theories obviously is relevant to theory assessment, but are comparativists (like Laudan) correct when they also make it necessary? This paper argues that they are not. Defining rationality solely in terms of theories’ comparative problem‐solving strengths, comparativist philosophers of science like Laudan subscribe...

Book Reviews • Book query • [Google Scholar] Laws of Fear:Beyond the Precautionary Principle, Cass Sunstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 234 pp., 23.99 cloth • Article author query • shrader-frechette k [Google Scholar] Kristin Shrader-Frechettea1 a1 University of Notre Dame

On August 22, 2005 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued proposed new regulations for radiation releases from the planned permanent U.S. nuclear-waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The goal of the new standards is to provide public-health protection for the next million years - even though everyone admits that the radioactive wast...

After giving a brief account of human rights, the paper investigates five contemporary attacks on them. All of the attacks come from two contemporary proponents of the cost-benefit state, attorney Cass Sunstein and philosopher Larry Laudan. These attacks may be called, respectively, the rationality, objectivity, permission, voluntariness, and compa...

The International Commission on Radiological Protection--whose regularly updated recommendations are routinely adopted as law throughout the globe--recently issued the first-ever ICRP protections for the environment. These draft 2005 proposals are significant both because they offer the commission's first radiation protections for any non-human par...

Eighty percent of (commercial) genetically engineered seeds (GES) are designed only to resist herbicides. Letting farmers use more chemicals, they cut labor costs. But developing nations say GES cause food shortages, unemployment, resistant weeds, and extinction of native cultivars when "volunteers" drift nearby. While GES patents are reasonable, t...

Environmental ethics, as a field of philosophical study, began in the 1970s and 1980s, in part as a result of the environmental movement and largely in Anglo-American work. Its roots trace to the monumental technological discoveries of the twentieth century, such as nuclear power and chemical pesticides; their overuse or misuse; and recognition of...

US testing of nuclear weapons has resulted in about 800,000 premature fatal cancers throughout the globe, and the nuclear tests of China, France, India, Russia, and the UK have added to this total. Surprisingly, however, these avoidable deaths have not received much attention, as compared, for example, to the smaller number of US fatalities on 9-11...

Many people argue that uncertain science-or controversial policies based on science-can be clarified primarily by greater attention to social/political values influencing the science and by greater attention to the vested interests involved. This paper argues that while such clarification is necessary, it is not a sufficient condition for achieving...

A common problem in ethics is that people often desire an end but fail to take the means necessary to achieve it. Employers and employees may desire the safety end mandated by performance standards for pollution control, but they may fail to employ the means, specification standards, necessary to achieve this end. This article argues that current (...

The public is getting a mixed message from ecologists, other scholars, and journalists on the topic of nonindigenous species. Misunderstandings and tension exist regarding the science, values, environmental ethics, and public policy relevant to invasive species, which are the subset of nonindigenous species that cause economic or environmental dama...

Last year the ICRP proposed a new system of radiation protection designed to be simpler, more oriented toward individual protection and reflective of important ethical standards. This article argues that the proposal violates important norms of scientific simplicity, is in fact less protective of individuals than the current system and makes a numb...

Blue-collar workers throughout the world generally face higher levels of pollution than the public and are unable to control many health risks that employers impose on them. Economists tend to justify these risky workplaces on the grounds of the compensating wage differential (CWD). The CWD, or hazard-pay premium, is the alleged increment in wages,...

Workers generally face higher levels of pollution and risk in their workplace than members of the public. Economists justify the double standard (for workplace versus public exposures to various pollutants) on the grounds of the compensating wage differential (CWD). The CWD, or hazard-pay premium, is the increment in wages, all things being equal,...

After reviewing international recommendations and national standards for occupational radiation exposures, the article summarizes the major ethical theories so as to analyze which theories various ICRP principles presuppose. It also shows how proponents of each ethical theory would support or criticize various radiation principles and practices. Fi...

Within the last 20 years, the US has mounted amassive campaign against invasions bynon-indigenous species (NIS) such as zebramussels, kudzu, water hyacinths, and brown treesnakes. NIS have disrupted native ecosystemsand caused hundreds of billions of dollars ofannual damage. Many in the scientificcommunity say the problem of NIS is primarilypolitic...

How does one deal with problems of risk transfer if it is the case that increasing risks to future generations decreases the risks to present generations, and increasing the risks to present generations decreases the risks to future generations? In the case of high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel, for example, should billions of dollars be spent...

Scientists are divided on the status of hypothesis H that low doses of ionizing radiation (under 20 rads) cause hormetic (or non-harmful) effects.Military and industrial scientists tend to accept H, while medical and environmental scientists tend to reject it.Proponents of the strong programme claim this debate shows that uncertain science can be c...

The controversy among Karl and Bowen (1999), pritchard (1999), and Grady and Quattro (1999) over scientific uncertainties and the ethical and political consequences of the black turtle's taxonomic status is caused by incomplete and uncertain scientific knowledge. When faced with cases of uncertainty, conservation biologists need to use ethical rati...

Cancer-Risk Models and Statistical Casualties: Caldwell and the Need for Public-Interest Science - Volume 18 Issue 2 - Kristin Shrader-Frechette

Humans have always sought utopias, utopias free from disease, utopias free from sin and pain, or utopias free from ignorance. Many of the current utopias focus on a “back to nature” sentiment that encourages refugees from industrialized society to join communes that establish a more desirable relationship between humans and the environment. Real ex...

Assessing the hydrogeological modeling at the Yucca Mountain and Maxey Flats nuclear repositories reveals a number of important ways in which theory choice can go wrong. The two cases suggest that there are at least six important criteria for evaluating the suitability of scientific models to be used for predictions intended to serve public policy....

We provide examples of the extent and nature of environmental and human health problems and show why in the United States prevailing scientific and legal burden of proof requirements usually cannot be met because of the pervasiveness of scientific uncertainty. We also provide examples of how may assumptions, judgments, evaluations, and inferences i...

In this note the authors survey existing international radiation-protection recommendations of the ICRP, the IAEA, and the ILO. After outlining previous work on the ethics of radiation protection and risk assessment/management, the authors review ethical thinking on five key issues related to radiation protection and ethics. They formulate each of...

In his article on siting a monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facility for spent nuclear fuel on Mescalero Apache land, Noah Sachs supports some aspects of the project and criticizes others. While some of his criticisms are defensible, most of his arguments supporting the facility are problematic. He argues (1) that paternalistic arguments against...