The Right to Know Is for Everyone

Perhaps one day, the "Right to Know" could become as basic to a democratic society as the right tofree speech. The first issue of the revised Environmental Health Perspectives was published on Earth Day 1993. This April 2000 issue marks the seventh anniversary of the revised EHP and the first anniversary to fall in the new millennium. The overarching purpose of any journal should be to provide accurate and relevant information to its readership. This is especially important to environmental health, where the issues are often controversial and confusing, yet important to people's health, their environment, and their overall quality of life. We believe that the "right to know" obligates us to give to our readership, induding scientists , industry, government, public advocacy groups, and the general public, the status of environmental health knowledge. This must be accomplished in an unbiased, objective, and timely manner to those who read EHP. The "right to know," however, extends far beyond the scope of any journal. This issue is heating up, and there is often discordant debate on what kinds ofinformation should be made available to the public, how the information should be presented, and the risks associated with public access to "worst case scenario" documents prepared for possible industrial accidents. It is an unfortunate fact that sometimes it takes a disaster to change the way people think. For example, the London fog of 1952, which contained fine particulate matter from industrial smoke stacks, resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 people and was seminal in relating air pollution to human suffering. The devastating effects of synthetic chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides was an environmental disaster caught in time by the publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring (1). The Bhopal disaster was of monumental proportions, resulting in the deaths of over 10,000 people. A leak of methyl iso-cyanate gas occurred in the early hours of 3 December 1984 at a pesticide factory that was owned by Union Carbide and located at the northern end of the city of Bhopal, India. According to the Bhopal People's Health and Documentation Clinic, 8,000 people were killed immediately after release of the gas and over 500,000 people were injured. It took the disaster of Bhopal for people to realize that the accidental release of toxic agents into the environment could result in massive human suffering anywhere, including the United States. In response to the Bhopal …