1st Edition

Environmental Health Risks Ethical Aspects

Edited By Friedo Zölzer, Gaston Meskens Copyright 2019
    214 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    214 Pages 7 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Environmental health involves the assessment and control of environmental factors that can potentially affect human health, such as radiation, toxic chemicals and other hazardous agents. It is less commonly understood that environmental health also requires addressing questions of an ethical nature.

    Bringing together work from experts across a range of sub-disciplines of environmental health, this collection of essays discusses the ethical implications of environmental health research and its application, presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Ethics of Environmental Health held in August 2016 in the Czech Republic. In doing so, it builds upon the insights and ideas put forward in the first volume of Ethics of Environmental Health, published by Routledge in early 2017.

    This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental health, applied ethics, environmental ethics, medical ethics and bioethics, as well as those concerned with public health, environmental studies, toxicology and radiation.

    Part I. Perception of environmental health risks and ethics

    1. Environmental health risks, moral emotions, and responsible risk communication Jessica Fahlquist and Sabine Röser

    2. Discourses on environment, public health and values: The case of obesity Michiel Korthals

    3. Socio-economic, historical and cultural background: implications for behavior after radiation accidents and better resilience Liudmila Liutsko, Takashi Ohba, Elisabeth Cardis, Thierry Schneider, Deborah Oughton

    Part II. Philosophical approaches to environmental health ethics

    4. How to bridge the gap between social acceptance and ethical acceptability: a Rawlsian approach Behnam Taebi

    5. The right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress for small farmers facing pesticides hazards Leslie London

    6. The politics of hypothesis: An inquiry into the ethics of scientific assessment Gaston Meskens

    Part III. The role of vested Interests in environmental health research

    7. Science, policy, and the transparency of values in environmental health research David Resnik

    8. The role of vested interests and dominant narratives in science, risk management and risk communication Colin Soskolne

    9. Tragic Failures: How the Law and Science Fail to Protect the Public Carl Cranor

    Part IV. Decision Making Tools for Environmental Health

    10. Ethical Tools for Decision Makers in Environment and Health  Peter Schröder Bäck and Joanne Vincenten

    11. Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness considerations in the assessment of environmental health risks – Ethical aspects Friedo Zölzer and Husseim Stuck

    12. The need for consistency in dealing with individual sensitivity to workplace hazards Chris Kalman

    Biography

    Friedo Zölzer is Head of the Department of Radiology, Toxicology and Civil Protection at the University of South Bohemia, Czech Republic.

    Gaston Meskens works part-time with the Centre for Ethics and Value Inquiry of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy at the University of Ghent, Belgium and with the Science and Technology Studies group of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCK-CEN, Belgium.