"The culture of economic growth and rapid innovation has led the chemical industry to contaminate tens of thousands of locales with hazardous chemicals that are poorly understood. As a result, the chemical industry finds itself at war with citizens who are troubled by the widespread dissemination of industrial poisons and alarmed by the power and unaccountability of the corporations themselves. The current chemical regulatory system has not provided an effective or reassuring restraint on chemical contamination because it relies heavily on a technique called risk assessment instead of the newer approach being tried now in Europe (REACH) and elsewhere, the precautionary principle. "

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