Specific Contributions of Politics, Economics, and Toxicology in Setting Socially Consensual Limit Values

/ Limit values are legal limits for the concentrations of substances in the environment. They must be agreed upon in a consensual procedure between science, economics/technology, and political forces. This is a crucial political precondition for their social acceptance. The arguments put forward to justify their expediency and numerical level are based not only on risk-benefit considerations but also on the aspect of the technical avoidability of direct and indirect exposure. The critical assessment of the direct benefit of specified exposures falls within the responsibility of economics/technology, whereas criteria for their potential adverse effects (direct and indirect) are provided by medicine/biochemistry and/or ecology. Within this concept, the avoidance of nonbeneficial-even if not openly adverse-exposure is the essential aim of environmental hygiene and should be promoted by politics/science. In general, society or segments thereof reject adverse, accept beneficial, and tolerate unavoidable exposure. Conflicts of interest arise when different groups of society simultaneously define a given exposure as being adverse, beneficial, and unavoidable. Therefore, from the viewpoint of society as a whole, an optimal exposure lies as far as reasonably achievable at a level lower than known or plausible adverse effect thresholds (as defined by toxicology or ecology). This optimal level of exposure must be determined using a transparent and, hence, public procedure.KEY WORDS: Legal limit values; Benefit threshold; Social acceptance; Social tolerability; Adverse effect threshold; Avoidable exposure; Tolerance threshold; Environmental hygiene