Toxicologists - come out and educate!

Toxicologists must be aware of the poor level of understanding among the no nscientific press and media, and presumably also within governments, of the quantitative aspects of environmental (including dietary) chemical hazards . The ignorance of the basic principles of dose response, and of the differ ences between hazard and risk and between a chance association and a causal relationship results in huge amounts of public money being misspent by foc using on the reduction or elimination of many trivial or even imaginary haz ards. Toxicologists as a profession should give more effort to the promulga tion of these concepts to journalists, the general public and particularly, those responsible for risk management.