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A broader view

The 1998 SETAC Annual Meeting firmly established the relationship described in its title, ‘‘The Natural Connection: Environmental Integrity and Human Health.’’ The connection between environmental integrity and human welfare, however, was largely overlooked. Scientists and engineers, when developing a case to conserve an environmental resource, often miss the opportunity to consider the effects of potential resource damage on human welfare, not just on the ecology and human health. SETAC members, with their analytical approach and involvement in key environmental situations, can play a role in protecting environmental resources by, at times, bringing the human welfare issue into debates along with the usually cited ecological and health stresses. My exposure to the academic aspects of the human welfare issue, i.e., to human well-being, began by working with environmental economists on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board and continued through working on studies by various National Research Council boards. This knowledge was applied recently when I spoke at a public meeting considering the construction of a roadway that would disturb a long-used trail on a wooded hillside in a park connecting a residential area with a commercial sector. Various consultants reported that the roadway would have no adverse environmental effects on the fauna and flora of the park and assured the audience that this meant no adverse environmental impact. Alas, they forgot that environmental laws and regulations address three, not two, issues: human health, ecological concerns, and human welfare. My speaking to that last issue helped to sway public and legal opinion to find another way to route the roadway. Environmental scientists and engineers should become familiar with the elements of protecting human welfare and raise these issues when appropriate to supplement resource concerns. Adverse effects on human welfare can be categorized as loss of the following: use value, aesthetic value, future use or intergenerational value, historical value and archaeological resources, and existence value. Use value can include economic loss (e.g., a fishery) or a recreational loss (e.g., a park component). Aesthetic value involves the joy of viewing the area. Intergenerational value relates to the loss of the valuable features of the resource to future generations. Historical value can include the feeling one gets when using a resource that has been a significant part of earth or life experience. Fifth, and last, people who never intend to use the resource or do not live or work near it also value its existence. Do you not value all of our state and national parks despite the fact that you are unlikely to visit all of them? The above issues do not require reaching far afield: they have been validated by scholarly and regulatory bodies. A panel of Nobel Laureates assembled in 1992 by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, in response to the Alaskan Exxon Valdez accident, endorsed a contingent valuation approach to quantify how much people value a natural resource; this valuation would include lost passive use value [1]. Contingent valuation involves asking a large number of people how much they are willing to pay for use and nonuse aspects of a natural resource. A U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board report [2] confirmed that nonuse values of a natural resource are real and can be measured, but the methodology used by the EPA at that time needed improvement. A definitive report on this resource valuation topic in regard to groundwater was issued by the National Research Council in 1997 [3]. Also in 1997, Vice President Gore initiated research by the Heinz Center, ‘‘A Report Card on the Health of the Nation’s Ecosystems’’ (www.heinzctr.org), which was to include nonuse human welfare values; however, reducing these to monetary values is proving difficult on a national level. However, in specific cases of interest to SETAC members, qualitative arguments regarding the five use and nonuse values can be persuasive. Incidentally, subsurface contamination is often remediated because of future use value, not because of complex exposure–toxicity determinations. Many projects are being challenged because of their environmental effects on human welfare, as opposed to effects on human health or ecosystem stability. For example, clarity of the atmosphere downwind from the Mount Storm power plant in eastern West Virginia has been cited as affecting human welfare. Similarly, visibility in the Grand Canyon was impaired by a distantly located power plant at Four Corners (where four western states meet). Other examples are concerns regarding certain mountain-top mining operations in West Virginia and Kentucky, houses and commercial buildings being built along ridgelines (Santa Fe, NM, outlaws this practice), and the clarity of the water of Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada. Increasingly, both the public and regulators are recognizing that human welfare is often the critical issue when an environment is threatened. Individual scientists should become familiar with the elements of damage to human welfare and use them in their efforts to protect environmental resources. SETAC, as an organization, could help by inviting environmental economists to speak at SETAC meetings and by publishing articles and references on this subject periodically in SETAC News.