EPA's Arsenic Rule: The Benefits of the Standard Do Not Justify the Costs

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently finalized a rule that would reduce the maximum allowable level of arsenic in drinking water by 80 percent. While arsenic is thought to be essential for the human body at low levels, it can cause cancer when consumed at higher concentrations for extended periods of time. This regulatory analysis evaluates the benefits and costs of the EPA's rule. On the basis of currently available information, we find that the EPA's standard cannot be justified on economic grounds. We estimate that the costs of the final rule will exceed the benefits by about $190 million annually. We also find that the rule probably will result in a net loss of life. We find that the rule probably will result in a net loss of life. The direct effect of the rule will be to save about ten lives annually in the future. After taking into account the indirect impacts of the cost of the rule on items like health care expenditures, however, we find that the rule is likely to result in a net loss of about ten lives annually. A question that the rule does not examine carefully is whether other regulatory alternatives could result in positive net benefits. We explore the option of targeting specific water systems and find that this strategy is unlikely to be very helpful. Instead of regulating more stringently now, the agency should wait until more information becomes available over the next few years. Such a strategy would have the advantage of avoiding large capital expenditures until the time that evidence suggests that risks posed by arsenic in drinking water are significant.

Nucleosynthesis in the early history of the solar system

Nucleosynthesis in early history of solar syste

The Rule of Law in Historical Perspective

Events of the past two decades have made imperative a fundamental re-examination of the basis of government and the legal order. The gross inhumanities of the German and Japanese regimes during the Second World War are fresh in our memories. In many areas of the world today, the force of law is being used for the systematic suppression of claims to freedom and human dignity. The revolutionary ferment of the post-war years has brought into existence new governments with the task of determining their fundamental orientation and the direction of their legal orders

The Challenge of the Rule of Law

The lecture last week considered the Rule of Law concept in historical perspective. Aside from its possible, highly restricted connotation of public order maintained by the force of politically organized society, three basic meanings or emphases were identified in discussions of the Rule of Law: first, certain constitutional principles, particularly those ascribed by Dicey to 19th-century Britain; second, certain valuable procedural safeguards of a fair trial; and third, those asserted universal and perhaps immutable principles, derived from God or Nature by the rational faculties of man, available to guide and, in some views, to invalidate positive legal action. Without denying the significance of any of these emphases, I suggested certain criticisms as relevant insofar as any one emphasis is advanced as the sole definition of the Rule of Law, and that concept, in tum, is offered as a general safeguard against abuses of the power of the modem state