Risk regulation as it is currently implemented has many pitfalls. In some cases, regulations to address one risk can introduce other risks. In many cases, expenditure to reduce a risk could save many more years of life if spent reducing another risk. These issues are not currently considered by many of the interest groups calling for more risk regulation, the public supporting those calls, or the governments who respond by introducing more regulation. Instead, risk activists and regulators focus on the potential benefits of risk regulation while ignoring the costs.

The chapters in this book help us to understand the importance of considering the costs of regulation and basing decisions about regulation on sound science and economics. They help us to struggle with the difficult question: how safe is safe enough?