Occupational exposure limits - an ethical dilemma

摘要

The exposure limit paradigm differentiates between the scientific approach of risk assessment and the value judgements of risk management. It is important that the concepts of both risk assessment and of risk management are visible. Experts involved in the risk assessment process are familiar with toxicology, but often unfamiliar with ethics as a methodological approach to moral problems inherent also in science. Utilitarism seems to be the most common approach to the ethical dilemmas of the occupational limits paradigm, but deontological principles applied in professional ethics seem to function as a limitation of the utilitaristic principle in practice.