I’m going to die. Don’t be alarmed. I have no indication that the event is imminent. But we all die eventually. The only questions are when and how. This week I wonder whether modern technology will give me a long life or an abbreviated one.
My dilemma is one faced by society as a whole.
These somber thoughts are prompted by recent news that the Zonolite vermiculite insulation manufactured by W.R. Grace in northeast Minneapolis for decades is present in many more houses than previously estimated. This insulation contains a small proportion of a form of asbestos that can cause mesothelioma, the deadly lung cancer that killed Rep. Bruce Vento in 2000.
I worked with Zonolite several times in my life, most intensively about 40 years ago when I was in grade school. We had remodeled our crackerbox farmhouse and were finishing the job by putting insulation in the attic. I took bags of Zonolite, a granular, pourable product and filled wall cavities. I crawled across this product.
The public policy question involved in all of this is whether we are too lax in introducing new products, some of which eventually prove to be harmful. Why didn’t we see the dangers in asbestos-containing vermiculite insulation when it was introduced a half-century ago?
I don’t have a good answer. But it seems clear that society faces dangers if we’re too careless in adopting new technology; and there are also dangers from being too cautious. Striking a mean that is fair and efficient is not easy.
Our society tends to stress any illness and premature deaths caused by technology, while underestimating its contribution to health and life.
While there may be strong causal links between manufactured substances in our environment, they usually are in terms of increased levels of risk rather than one-to-one certainty. Frequently these links are not discovered until a large numbers of people are exposed to a substance for a long time, producing a visible change in public health.
Regulatory programs that require proof of the safety of new materials can help.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration distinguished itself decades ago by refusing to approve Thalidomide even though most European countries had allowed it. Our country was spared the wave of children with severe birth defects that the United Kingdom and other countries suffered.
But the same agency failed to discover the damage that a synthetic hormone, diethyl-stilbesterol (DES) would cause in the offspring of women who took this new wonder drug during pregnancy. Thousands of women and men suffered reproductive cancers and other problems as a result.
Some argue that we should not adopt a new technology until it’s proven safe. But proving safety without exposing many humans to the technology is difficult.
Society can be harmed in two different ways by alternate approaches to adopting new technology. A nation can be lax and generally allow the use of new technologies unless there is substantive evidence of danger. Such a society will benefit from quick and widespread adoption of new substances and machines. However, more people will die from unforeseen side effects of these new products.
A more restrictive approach will avoid deaths from side effects, but will deny society the benefits of the new products.
Inevitably, some people will be hurt even under policies that strike a pretty good balance. When W.R. Grace introduced Zonolite, the company thought it had an effective way to make people’s houses warmer and save energy. The product was fireproof and less irritating to installers’ skin and lungs than existing alternatives. There was no avaricious malice on the company’s part and, based on my limited knowledge of the affair, no real negligence based on industry and regulatory practice at the time.
If I eventually am diagnosed with mesothelioma, I may be less sanguine about this issue. I don’t want to die young.
To the extent that society as a whole generally benefits from introduction of new products, society as a whole should bear much of the cost when specific new products end up causing unforeseen harm. In my view, government should pick up much of the cost of asbestos and lead abatement out of fairness, but also so that the societal costs of unsafe products are clearly evident and not buried as losses to scattered private households.
© 2003 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.