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Chemical Policy Reform

Act on Early Warnings

I decided to read this background paper on the Louisville Charter Website. The reason I have chosen this paper is because I feel like this country spends a lot of time, money and resources on reacting to harmful events rather than spending a significant amount of time, money, and resources on prevention. I wanted to gain insight on policies and practices that are currently in place to gain an idea of what a little forward thinking can do. This section aims to prevent harmful events from occurring through science and through history. The focus isn't solely on the individual, but it also focuses on the Federal and State Levels. Some important steps that are to be taken include Create and Strengthen Health & Environmental Programs to Detect and Predict Possible Harm, Take Action when Credible Evidence of Harm is Found, Monitor Novel Technologies, Consider Clusters of Health Problems to Be Early Warnings and Open Toxic Tort Records. I found this paper to be very informative. There were detailed guidelines that can be followed in the event of warning signs and so on. 

Comments

  1. Hi Jordan,

    I agree with you that this country spends more money on cleaning up incidents rather than preventing them. It seems like it would be more cost effective to put more money in prevention tho. Also, it would save the environment and keep people healthier

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  2. Hi Jordan,

    I agree with you and Caitlin that it does seem that our government spends much more time and resources reacting to events rather than preventing them. This is true in so many other areas too (ie-homelessness). The fact that places like Europe is able to implement policies of prevention shows that it's possible too.

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