I don't think we're at odds in terms of trying to protect the public. I mean, this is motherhood and apple pie. Of course we want to eliminate dangerous substances from our environment. The question is how we go about doing this. We can both spew data, but it comes down to a question of judgment and making educated guesses.
I would dispute the dioxin curve. I think there certainly is evidence for dioxin having a hormesitic effect. I would direct you to a number of papers by Ed Calabrese, who has looked at this issue extensively with his colleagues. There's a lot of information on this, that it's not a linear curve.
The reason I looked at the blood chemistry when we were talking about the ethers is that this is exactly what Environmental Defence did. They took subjects from across the country and measured blood levels. They did not relate it to fatty deposits and how much was in the fat. They looked exclusively.
Incidentally, the polybrominated diphenyl ethers have been extensively looked at both in terms of total body burden and in terms of what is present in the blood. I've searched the literature on this really thoroughly, and I don't find any animal data that would suggest the doses we are exposed to represent a risk.
I keep coming back to the fact that, as you well pointed out, there is no certainty in science. We make decisions. We have come to be accustomed to a certain mode of living wherein we make use of a large variety of substances. The number of chemicals to which we are exposed is immense. If you just think back to what you may have done in the last 24 hours, you've probably drunk out of plastic cups, eaten out of plastic dishes, or used cosmetics.
These are chemically extremely complex things. Each of these has to be manufactured. It's impossible to manufacture them without releasing some substances. Just the fact that substances are there and are measurable really doesn't say anything more than that we have tremendous analytical capabilities, in that we can now measure things down to parts per trillion or even less.
And just one more thing: you were talking about changes in molecular structure and how subtle that concept is. That, of course, is true. But you can't always predict. If you look at methanol and ethanol, what could be more similar than those? You're looking at the two fundamental alcohols, with one carbon difference, and yet methanol is far more toxic than ethanol. I think if you didn't know that and only looked at the toxicity of ethanol, you would not predict the methanol toxicity, or vice versa.