ABSTRACT
One of the most important functions of government is to protect public health and the environment from exposure to environmental risk. Through the enactment of environmental laws governments have established regulatory programmes that seek to provide comprehensive protection against environmental harm. Yet regulatory policy inevitably must confront considerable uncertainty in assessing risks and determining how to control them most effectively. As society struggles to forge rough consensus over appropriate approaches to regulation in the face of this uncertainty, decisions to regulate or not to regulate individual products, chemicals or pollutants often generate enormous controversy.
