ABSTRACT
It is not difficult to establish that there is a problem of death and disease that is related to the occupational use of chemical substances and that its dimensions are considerable. However, as policymakers at the EU level and elsewhere have discovered, it is considerably harder to demonstrate with any exactitude the extent of its component parts, their occurrence and their relative contribution to outcomes in terms of measures of mortality, morbidity and associated economic loss. It is therefore an area in which the celebrated opinion of the former U.S. Secretary of Defense, on the nature and extent of knowledge, is particularly apposite.
