ReviewAmerican journal of public health2001
The precautionary principle also applies to public health actions.
Review in American journal of public health, 2001. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The public health impacts of mining in Australia.The Medical journal of Australia · 2025Pooled it
- Week-Ahead Prediction of High-Risk Drinking Episodes Among Young Adults Using Wearable Biosignals and Psychological Vulnerabilities: Prospective Observational Machine Learning Study.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2026Observational
- Misplaced optimism about e-cigarettes for smoking cessation in New Zealand.The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific · 2026Article
- Ultraprocessed food research and scientific discourse.Nature food · 2026Review
- Digital paternalism and adolescent autonomy: ethical reflections on Australia's under-16 social media ban.BMC medical ethics · 2026Article
- From compliance to risk: A paradigm for nursing and midwifery regulation in Ireland.Journal of nursing regulation · 2026Article
- A precautionary approach to social media: protecting young minds in an evolving digital world.The Medical journal of Australia · 2025Article
- WHO'Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Threaten, Distract, and Discredit: Cannabis Industry Rhetoric to Defeat Regulation of High-THC Cannabis Products in Washington State.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2024Article
- Gambling on others' health: risky pro-social decision-making in the era of COVID-19.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Novel evidence on sepsis-inducing pathogens: from laboratory to bedside.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
- The widespread presence of non-nutritive sweeteners challenges adherence to beverage guidance for children.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Genome Editing in Human Gametes and Embryos: The Legal Dimension in Europe.Biotech (Basel (Switzerland)) · 2022Article
- Empowering local research ethics review of antibacterial mass administration research.Infectious diseases of poverty · 2022Review
- Telemedicine and Haemodialysis Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Integrative Review of Patient Safety, Healthcare Quality, Ethics and the Legal Considerations in Singapore Practice.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Multidisciplinary Student Groups Support Digital Education as a Public Health Precautional Action to Prevent Spread of COVID-19 Infection: A Mixed Methods Study.Journal of multidisciplinary healthcare · 2022Article
- Advances in Assessing Hazard and Risk to Emerging Threats and Emergency Response: Comparing and Contrasting Efforts of 3 Federal Agencies.Toxicological sciences : an official journal of the Society of Toxicology · 2021Article
- Communicating scientific uncertainty in a rapidly evolving situation: a framing analysis of Canadian coverage in early days of COVID-19.BMC public health · 2021Article
- Regulatory Resistance? Narratives and Uses of Evidence around "Black Market" Provision of Gambling during the British Gambling Act Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Review
- Let fever do its job: The meaning of fever in the pandemic era.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The precautionary principle asserts that the burden of proof for potentially harmful actions by industry or government rests on the assurance of safety and that when there are threats of serious damage, scientific uncertainty must be resolved in favor of prevention. Yet we in public health are sometimes guilty of not adhering to this principle. Examples of actions with unintended negative consequences include the addition of methyl tert-butyl ether to gasoline in the United States to decrease air pollution, the drilling of tube wells in Bangladesh to avoid surface water microbial contamination, and villagewide parenteral antischistosomiasis therapy in Egypt. Each of these actions had unintended negative consequences. Lessons include the importance of multidisciplinary approaches to public health and the value of risk-benefit analysis, of public health surveillance, and of a functioning tort system-all of which contribute to effective precautionary approaches.
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Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.