Toxicological risk assessment in the courtroom: are available methodologies suitable for evaluating toxic tort and...

Courts are increasingly faced with the need to resolve claims by individuals that they have been injured by chemical exposures or that they have been put at sufficient risk by such exposures that their health status must be monitored to ensure the earliest possible detection of developing injuries or diseases. This paper offers the view that the principles and methods developed and applied by toxicologists, epidemiologists, and risk assessors to support regulatory and public health decision-making are inadequate to evaluate the types of claims that courts are called upon to resolve in such cases. No well-described alternative methodology appears to be available, and as a result, courts are exposed to a wide range of expert opinions based on diverse, conflicting, and sometimes baseless methodologies. It is suggested that there may be value in an effort by the community of professionals in toxicology, epidemiology, and risk assessment to devote attention to the types of data and scientific methodologies that might be appropriate for evaluating the technical questions that such claims provoke. Such an effort might assist trial judges in the role they have been assigned in the Supreme Court's 1993 Daubert decision, wherein they are asked to make a preliminary assessment of the admissibility of the scientific methodologies relied upon by various experts. Such an assessment, if based on an understanding of the types of data and methodologies suitable for evaluating claims of injury, offers the possibility of limiting the range of expert opinion that ultimately is heard in courtrooms to that which conforms to scientifically valid standards.