You're absolutely right, communicating to the public is extremely challenging. I think it is a specialty within science. The same way that you have specialties in medicine or in chemistry, there's a specialty in science communication. It's not easy to make things apparent to the public, since they are not white or black issues. There are many shades of grey. That's one of the things I tried to point out. Even when you look at one specific class of chemicals, within that class there are dramatic differences. There are differences in the application and in what the compounds can do in the amounts that are used. It's the molecular structure that really determines what is going on.
I think as CEPA is implemented, one of the features has to be to communicate to the public just what this is all about. It takes a lot of thought to know just what kind of language to use in order to give the appropriate level of comfort to the public. It has to be such that you communicate to the public that things are being done. But no matter what, there are inherent risks. We do not live in a world in which you can ever guarantee that things are risk free. There's a certain level of risk that has to be accepted because it is part of our lifestyle. It's a question of risk versus benefit.
It's very easy to talk about the precautionary principle. It's motherhood and apple pie. How do you communicate to the public what this precautionary principle really is? How can you have a degree of satisfaction that the public will accept? You can tell industry to prove that something is safe. How do you do this? How can you prove that something is safe? You cannot prove a negative in science, unfortunately. You can't prove that something cannot happen. I could not prove to you that reindeer cannot fly, right? I think most people would agree that they can't, but I couldn't prove that to you.