Uncertain hazards
Subtitle: environmental activists and scientific proof
By: Sylvia Noble Tesh.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2000
Place of publication: Ithaca, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 168
Subjects: Environmentalism -- Social aspects
Description: "Ordinary citizens frequently organize around environmental issues on which little scientific evidence exists to back activists' claims. Should we then dismiss such claims as spurious? Or should we side with citizens against the polluters?".

"Uncertain Hazards takes neither path. In exploring the problem of scientific uncertainty about links between pollution and public health, Sylvia Noble Tesh shows that much of the problem can be traced to the newness of the environmental movement. The inability of scientists to find data corroborating citizens' claims stems partly from the "pre-environmentalist" assumptions still influencing the environmental health sciences, Tesh says.

On the other hand, the conviction of activists that industrial pollutants threaten their health results from the environmental movement's success in promoting new ideas about nature." "Tesh points to ways that environmentalist ideas have begun to affect science, thus making more likely the discovery of links between exposure to industrial pollutants and a community's health problems."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Acknowledgements.; title: Overview.; title: Protest against pollution.; title: Environmental health research.; title: New ideas about nature.; title: Environmentalist science.; title: Understanding risk.; title: Experiential Knowledge.; title: Social movements and social change.