Grants and Fellowships | 2014

26 Multi-Year Research Grants Formation of Environmental Health Policy in a Contested Science Environment The objective of the proposed study is to assess the processes through which environmental and health regulations in Israel are devised and implemented in response to the emergence of new technologies, which are embedded in scientific uncertainty. Our particular focus will be on the regulation of cellular telephony and base antennas. We shall trace how the people and institutions involved in devising new regulation treat relevant scientific findings at early stages in which no scientific consensus has emerged. How are regulatory decisions made, we ask, when they are perforce based on contested science? The proposed study will employ different methodologies to examine the way in which environmental health policies have evolved in Israel in the context of these technologies, using in-depth legal analysis of the evolution of the current regulatory structures, extensive interviews of relevant stakeholders, structured questionnaires of public health physicians and epidemiological literature review. Because novel technologies (biotechnologies, nanotechnologies, digital technologies and others) are an important part of our economy and society, regulation in the face of scientific controversy will be an ever-mounting challenge in Israel and throughout the developed world. Our study will be an important step towards improving the way such regulation is fashioned. Apart from contributing to the Israeli public health policy-making, the suggested study will complement other studies conducted mainly in the US and Europe which examine how regulators cope with uncertainty in the environment and health field. Research publications (1) Ayal, A., Hareuveny, R., & Perez, O. (2013). Science, politics and transnational regulation: Regulatory scientific institutions and the dilemmas of hybrid authority. Transnational Environmental Law, 2 (1), 45-68. Oren Perez 1 | Adi Ayal 1 Nadav Davidovitch 2 Ronen Hareuveny 3 1. Bar-Ilan University 2. Ben-Gurion University of the Negev 3. Soreq Nuclear Research Center (NRC) 2010-