The problem of uncertainty has plagued environmental regulation from the beginning. The common practice in the U.S. is to ignore or deny the existence of uncertainty, or to apply arbitrary numerical "fudge factors," then to proceed as if everything were known with a high degree of certainty. For example, a deadly amount of a chemical may be determined for mice; then a fudge factor of 100 or 100...

BACKGROUND Paternal preconception risk factors such as smoking, exposure to environmental substances, medication use, overweight and advanced age correlate with the occurrence of malformations and birth defects in the offspring. Nonetheless, the prevalence of risk factors for adverse pregnancy outcomes in the male population has been scarcely investigated and no report on preconception interven...

Several key studies have found that a smallminority of producers, polluting at levels far exceeding group averages, generate themajority of overall exposure to industrial toxics. Frequently, such patterns go unnoticed and are understudied outside of the academic community. To our knowledge, no research to date has systematically described the scope and extent of extreme variations in industrial...

In silico toxicology in its broadest sense means "anything that we can do with a computer in toxicology." Many different types of in silico methods have been developed to characterize and predict toxic outcomes in humans and environment. The term non-testing methods denote grouping approaches, structure-activity relationship, and expert systems. These methods are already used for regulatory pur...

Agricultural useful soils in many parts of India and the world are slightly contaminated by presence of heavy metal toxicity. Few as Cd, Cu, Zn, Ni, Co, Cr, Pb, and As. This because long-term use of phosphatic fertilizers, sewage sludge application, dust from smelters, industrial waste and bad watering practices in agricultural lands [13]. Toxics Link in India has been involved both at the glob...

The present study was aimed at comparing the ability of three crop plants for phytoremediation of zinc (Zn) and nickel (Zn) from soils. A factorial (3×2×3) experiment based on RCBD was used to compare the treatments, and was repeated three times. The first factor was crop type (wheat, clover and rapeseed), the second factor was heavy metal types (zinc (Zn) and nickel (Ni)) and the third factor ...

Annex 12 addresses definitions, general principles, programs, monitoring, early warning system, human health, research, and reporting. This annex embraces the philosophy of zero discharge and the goal of virtual elimination, and the Parties have achieved considerable success in controlling direct, point source discharges of toxic chemicals to the lakes. The Commission finds, however, that there...