This Article explains how the regulation of toxic chemicals has evolved as a risk-based system with an increasing demand for chemical information that far outstrips the supply.  This information gap hinders regulation, a problem Professor Applegate analyzes from the viewpoint of both supply and demand, and for which he ultimately proposes the use of demand-side solutions.  Professor Applegate traces the history of chemical regulation and its shifting reliance on two different meanings and functions of risk.

“Risk-as-hazard” defines the existence of a potential harm and “functions as a trigger for regulatory action.”  “Risk-as-probability” quantifies the extent of a potential harm and functions as a standard for “disciplining the regulatory response.”  The development of quantitative risk assessment and increasing judicial scrutiny of regulatory action have “transform[ed] the legal approach to toxics from an open-ended risk-as-hazard trigger to a constrained risk-as-probability standard,” which “requires that regulatory action be supported by extensive amounts of toxicity and exposure information—information that simply does not exist.”  Professor Applegate explains the two basic approaches to managing this gap in information—either “filling” it by an increase in the supply of information or “bridging” it by a reduction in demand.

He concludes that all strategies for filling the supply of information are fundamentally limited because “a quantified, comprehensive approach to regulatory standards is an unquenchable thirst. . . . [T]here are always more questions than answers . . . .”  Bridging strategies are therefore needed.  Professor Applegate explains how reforms such as technology-based standards, pollution taxes, and incentives for safer chemical substitutes have lower information demands because they avoid risk-as-probability as the regulatory standard.  With limits on demand, he believes regulators “can apply manageable amounts of actually obtainable data to protect human health and the environment from chemical hazards.”