William Ruckelshaus is on a crusade to persuade the American public to fundamentally change its ideals about public health and the environment. We should, he says, "accept" risk.¹ We should lower our expectations of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We should not dare to hope for more than "reasonable" protection from carcinogens and other hazards.

There are grave moral and practical consequences to what EPA Administrator Ruckelshaus advocates. Some of these consequences show up plainly in the regulation of hazardous pollutants. EPA has proposed standards for benzene, arsenic, and radionuclides, for example, which many feel fall far short of what is required. Let me highlight four of the generic issues the EPA hazardous pollutant proposals have raised.