Interactive feedback relationships Environments

Figure 1.1 depicts the three components of an overall interactive feedback-loop relationship that is tripartite in nature, involving scientific research, health risk assessment, and the regulation of lead in the human environment. Scientific research informs both risk assessment and regulatory initiatives. Subsequent needs for adequate risk assessment and stronger, more effective regulation then dictate that there be more research. Adequate regulation is also informed by adequate human health risk assessments, subsequent... 

The interactive, feedback-loop relationships for lead among scientific research, risk assessments, and regulatory initiatives graphically depicted in previous chapters would predict that lead regulation in whatever environmental medium in the human environment arises from demonstrated threats to health shown by both scientific research and health-risk assessment. Consequently, discussions of lead in this and subsequent chapters require prefacing with brief perspectives on medium-specific lead exposures and associated human health hazards. This perspective differs from the previous detailed discussions in the health effects chapters in this book. Chapters 11—19. 

While Part 5 deals with the regulation of lead in the human environment, it is not meant to be a statutory and governmental executive history of the element in various environments. The focus is on the processes by which regulatory actions for lead have occurred and are occurring within interactive, positive feedback loop cycles with the other two main topics in this book—scientific research and human health risk assessment. The extent to which these interactive relationships will continue to feed overall protections for public health is also discussed. 

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