Abstract
Chemicals can be as harmful to humans and the environment as they are useful. Therefore, it appears rather clear that only those chemicals should be used in the market that do not have an adverse impact on humans and the environment. The list of chemicals in the market of the European Union between 1971 and 1981 (EINECS list, http://chemicalwatch.com/927) contains 1,00,000 chemicals and almost 1,000 chemicals newly enter the market yearly, see, e.g., Bruggemann and Drescher-Kaden (2003), van Leeuwen et al. (1996), and Ahlers (1999). How do we find out whether they are hazardous? There are many time-consuming and expensive investigations necessary to perform a risk assessment. Hence the question is: With which chemicals to begin at first? Thus ranking is needed to give the more involved investigations a reasonable operating sequence (Newman, 1995).
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Brüggemann, R., Patil, G.P. (2011). Why Prioritization, Why Ranking. In: Ranking and Prioritization for Multi-indicator Systems. Environmental and Ecological Statistics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8477-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8477-7_1
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