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Book Review
| Environmental Public Health Policy for Asbestos on Schools: Unintended Consequences. By Jacqueline Karnell Corn. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2000. 141 pp. Cloth $69.95.
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| This overlooked book is a history of an extremely contentious question in environmental policy: what to do about asbestos contamination and low-level exposure in schools. In the absence of scientific certainty, Corn writes, policy choices are forced into an arena where scientific and political partisanship distort optimum public policy. As a result, the presentation and perception of an issue assumes greater importance. "Different scientists analyzed the same facts and reached different conclusions," she says. "As a result, scientific controversy was transformed into vituperative public debate." |
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Corn's book begins with a scholarly general history of asbestos and the discovery of its harmful effects in the workplace. With clarity and precision, Corn dissects the problem of assessing risk for non-occupational exposures. Most of the history focuses on the development of the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) in 1985 and on the effects of the asbestos debate on school systems. A prime example of the impact was a twenty-day hiatus of school operations in New York in September 1993. Corn suggests that New York schools became confused by conflicting scientific views and the result was a public embarrassment. |
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Corn is convinced that the question of risk—whether there is more risk in removing asbestos materials or leaving them in place—should have been seen as a scientifically settled issue. The EPA exaggerated risks and avoided uncertainties, while Congress did not take time to understand the science and passed a law that encouraged schools to proceed with high-risk asbestos abatement. Yet if the point is a high degree of confusion and controversy, Corn's apparent disappointment in a confused policy outcome seems inconsistent. |
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The scholarly approach that graces the majority of the book is marred when Corn describes the controversy between two conflicting and well-financed camps of reputable scientists: 1) those who think all asbestos exposure is unsafe at any level, and 2) those who want to balance relative risk against relative cost and don't believe asbestos should be removed from buildings unless it is crumbling. |
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Scientific meetings hosted by the two groups in the early 1990s were described as "dueling conferences" by many observers and Corn contrasts the two conferences in a manner that clearly shows where her sympathies lie. When describing a symposium at Harvard by the second group of scientists, Corn provides a list of participants and their scientific conclusions. When describing the "Third Wave" symposium by the first group of scientists, Corn presents us with letters of apology from conference organizers. There are no scientific conclusions from the Third Wave group in Corn's book, and Corn lets us know that "the most upsetting" aspect of this conference was that it excluded people from the Harvard conference. Yet from the list of participants at the Harvard conference, it seems as if the exclusions were mutual. |
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Given the potential conflicts of interest that the author discloses in the foreword—including research grants from asbestos defendant W.R. Grace Co. and her marriage to a former OSHA administrator—one would have expected a greater effort to describe this compelling modern controversy at arms length. Otherwise, Corn's book provides a useful history of an on-going public health controversy. |
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William Kovarik is a professor of media studies at Radford University where he teaches science and environment writing, media history, and media law. He is the co-author of Mass Media and Environmental Conflict (with Mark Neuzil, Sage Publications, 1996) and several articles on environmental journalism and energy history. |
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