Preventive conservation approaches

Charter of Vantaa (2000) Recommendations for a European approach in Preventive Conservation. Passed on the Vantaa-meeting. September, 21-22, 2000. 

The pollution prevention principle presupposes that all environmental pressure is potentially harmful. Conservative approaches are necessary to protect the environment because multiple stressors due to the presence of low concentrations of more than one substance or unexpected effects of metabolites (e.g., hormone disruption) can never be excluded. This opinion is in line with the community conditioning hypothesis (Matthews et al. 1996), which states that ecological communities tend to preserve information about every event in their history, including stress by substances. It is also in line with the rivet hypothesis (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1981), which presupposes that each loss of a species (equivalent to a rivet in the analogy) affects ecosystem integrity to a small extent, and, if too many rivets are lost, the system collapses. 

A further conservative approach in line with the pollution prevention principle is to apply an additional uncertainty factor to the MPCs of individual compounds to account for the possible combined effects of the many substances encountered in the environment. For example, in The Netherlands, negligible risk concentrations (NCs) are derived from the MPC by dividing it by 100. These NCs are considered as target values to be reached in the near future (-10 years Sijm et al. 2002). 

The mainstay of medical treatment of patients with ethanol toxicity is supportive care. In general, a conservative approach is recommended for ethanol intoxication. Supportive therapy for overdose may include treatment for respiratory depression, hypotension, and altered glucose or thiamine levels. If the ingestion occurred within one hour of presentation, placing a nasogastric tube and evacuating the stomach contents can prove helpful. In patients with chronic ethanol abuse, therapy may include administration of thiamine to prevent neurologic injury. The administration of medications to cause emesis is not recommended because of the rapid onset of CNS depression as well as aspiration risks. 

The continued viability of the Frye approach has been a subject of much debate, both before and after Daubert. The purpose of the Frye test was to prevent...the introduction into evidence of specious and unfounded scientific principles or conclusions based upon such principles. Advocates of this conservative approach argue that it protects the legal system from the junk science that plagues the litigation process. As E.A. Firestone has explained ... 

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