Biological monitoring and Biological Limit Values (BLV): The strategy of the European Union

Occupational standards concerning allowable concentrations of chemical compounds in the ambient air of workplaces have been established in several countries worldwide. With the integration of the European Union (EU), there has been a need of establishing harmonised Occupational Exposure Limits (OEL). The European Commission Directive 95/320/EC of 12 July 1995 has given the tasks to a Scientific Committee for Occupational Exposure Limits (SCOEL) to propose, based on scientific data and where appropriate, occupational limit values which may include the 8-h time-weighted average (TWA), short-term limits/excursion limits (STEL) and Biological Limit Values (BLVs). In 2000, the European Union issued a list of 62 chemical substances with Occupational Exposure Limits. Of these, 25 substances received a skin notation, indicating that toxicologically significant amounts may be taken up via the skin. For such substances, monitoring of concentrations in ambient air may not be sufficient, and biological monitoring strategies appear of potential importance in the medical surveillance of exposed workers. Recent progress has been made with respect to formulation of a strategy related to health-based BLVs. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Science-policy in environmental and health risk assessment: if we cannot do without, can we do better?

How can empirical evidence of adverse effects from exposure to noxious agents, which is often incomplete and uncertain, be used most appropriately to protect human health? We examine several important questions on the best uses of empirical evidence in regulatory risk management decision-making raised by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s science-policy concerning uncertainty and variability in human health risk assessment. In our view, the US EPA (and other agencies that have adopted similar views of risk management) can often improve decision-making by decreasing reliance on default values and assumptions, particularly when causation is uncertain. This can be achieved by more fully exploiting decision-theoretic methods and criteria that explicitly account for uncertain, possibly conflicting scientific beliefs and that can be fully studied by advocates and adversaries of a policy choice, in administrative decision-making involving risk assessment. The substitution of decision-theoretic frameworks for default assumption-driven policies also allows stakeholder attitudes toward risk to be incorporated into policy debates, so that the public and risk managers can more explicitly identify the roles of risk-aversion or other attitudes toward risk and uncertainty in policy recommendations. Decision theory provides a sound scientific way explicitly to account for new knowledge and its effects on eventual policy choices. Although these improvements can complicate regulatory analyses, simplifying default assumptions can create substantial costs to society and can prematurely cut off consideration of new scientific insights (e.g., possible beneficial health effects from exposure to sufficiently low 'hormetic' doses of some agents). In many cases, the administrative burden of applying decision-analytic methods is likely to be more than offset by improved effectiveness of regulations in achieving desired goals. Because many foreign jurisdictions adopt US EPA reasoning and methods of risk analysis, it may be especially valuable to incorporate decision-theoretic principles that transcend local differences among jurisdictions.

The difference between science and philosophy: The Spinoza-Boyle controversy revisited

This article examines the seventeenth-century debate between the Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza and the British scientist Robert Boyle, with a view to explicating what the twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze considers to be the difference between science and philosophy. The two main themes that are usually drawn from the correspondence of Boyle and Spinoza, and used to polarize the exchange, are the different views on scientific methodology and on the nature of matter that are attributed to each correspondent. Commentators have tended to focus on one or the other of these themes in order to champion either Boyle or Spinoza in their assessment of the exchange. This paper draws upon the resources made available by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their major work What is Philosophy?, in order to offer a more balanced account of the exchange, which in its turn contributes to our understanding of Deleuze and Guattari's conception of the difference between science and philosophy.

Signal or Noise? Information Theory and the Novel

In the context of a hostile funding environment, universities are increasingly asked to justify their output in narrowly defined economic terms, and this can be difficult in Humanities or Arts faculties where productivity is rarely reducible to a simple financial indicator. This can lead to a number of immediate consequences that I have no need to rehearse here, but can also result in some interesting tensions within the academic community itself. First is that which has become known as the ‘Science Wars’: the increasingly acrimonious exchanges between scientists and scientific academics and cultural critics or theorists about who has the right to describe the world. Much has already been said—and much remains to be said—about this issue, but it is not my intention to discuss it here. Rather, I will look at a second area of contestation: the incorporation of scientific theory into literary or cultural criticism. Much of this work comes from a genuine commitment to interdisciplinarity, and an appreciation of insights that a fresh perspective can bring to a familiar object. However, some can be seen as cynical attempts to lend literary studies the sort of empirical legitimacy of the sciences. In particular, I want to look at a number of critics who have applied information theory to the literary work. In this paper, I will examine several instances of this sort of criticism, and then, through an analysis of a novel by American author Richard Powers, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, show how this sort of criticism merely reduces the meaningful analysis of a complex literary text.

Social capital society and peace: Reflections on conflict transformation in the Philippines

Civil society is recognised as comprising complex and multifaceted entities, resilient to and yet responsive to both the state apparatus and global market processes. Civil society in the Philippines, long regarded as one of the most vibrant, diverse and innovative in Asia, has emerged as a significant actor in the field of conflict resolution and peace-building. In thinking about the work of peace, this paper engages with the effectiveness of civil society in mobilising societal awareness for a ‘just and lasting peace’ in the southern Philippines. Shaped by development paradigms that privilege concepts such as social capital, the paper aims to interrogate how such concepts situated within the development–security nexus proposed by the Philippine government and funding agencies have influenced conflict-transformation initiatives in Mindanao, Philippines.