A risky business, writing regulations.A bill requiring federal agencies to conduct cost-benefit and risk analyses of both new and existing health, safety, and environmental regulations passed the House of Representatives by a wide margin last week. The legislation covers everything from drinking water drinking watersupply of water available to animals for drinking supplied via nipples, in troughs, dams, ponds and larger natural water sources; an insufficient supply leads to dehydration; it can be the source of infection, e.g. leptospirosis, salmonellosis, or of poisoning, e.g. standards to wildlife protection. The Risk Assessment and Cost-Benefit Analysis cost-benefit analysis In governmental planning and budgeting, the attempt to measure the social benefits of a proposed project in monetary terms and compare them with its costs. Act, part of the Republican's Contract with America In the historic 1994 midterm elections, Republicans won a majority in Congress for the first time in forty years, partly on the appeal of a platform called the Contract with America. Put forward by House Republicans, this sweeping ten-point plan promised to reshape government. , would force regulators to quantify in great detail how rules would increase or decrease risks to humans and the environment (SN: 2/11/95, p.87). Regulators would have to use "scientifically objective and unbiased" assessments to demonstrate that the benefits of rules would outweigh their costs, the bill states. The risk assessments would have to include available laboratory and epidemiological data on the regulated activity or toxin toxin, poison produced by living organisms. Toxins are classified as either exotoxins or endotoxins. Exotoxins are a diverse group of soluble proteins released into the surrounding tissue by living bacterial cells. . When describing the risk, regulators would have to provide examples of more serious, less serious, and equivalent risks familiar to the public. In the case of particularly expensive regulations, independent panels would evaluate the agencies' assessments; they would also review annually the agencies' cost and risk assessment programs. The panels could include members of industries covered by the regulations under review. Robert S Robert, Henry Martyn 1837-1923. American army engineer and parliamentary authority. He designed the defenses for Washington, D.C., during the Civil War and later wrote Robert's Rules of Order (1876). Noun 1. . Walker (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Science Committee, says the bill would relieve the country of unnecessary regulations. But opponents, including members of the administration, say the legislation could override existing laws that protect human and environmental health. What's more, they claim, the many requirements of the bill would prove expensive to government and industry and would be impossible to implement. Regulators can't determine all the costs of polluted pol·lute tr.v. pol·lut·ed, pol·lut·ing, pol·lutes 1. To make unfit for or harmful to living things, especially by the addition of waste matter. See Synonyms at contaminate. 2. water, for example, or the real risks of some chemicals to people of various health and ages, critics assert. |
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