Toxicologists -- come out and educate!

ABSTRACT

Toxicologists must be aware of the poor level of understanding among the non-scientific press and media, and presumably also within governments, of the quantitative aspects of environmental (including dietary) chemical hazards. The ignorance of the basic principles of dose response, and of the differences between hazard and risk and between a chance association and a causal relationship results in huge amounts of public money being misspent by focusing on the reduction or elimination of many trivial or even imaginary hazards. Toxicologists as a profession should give more effort to the promulgation of these concepts to journalists, the general public and, particularly, those responsible for risk management.