Right To Know
Cry Wolf Quotes
I can assure you from my experience, it’s going to cost us jobs.
The bill produces no protection for legitimate industry trade secrets, the disclosure of which would not be necessary to protect health or the environment.
We do not believe that merely furnishing a list of the ingredients of our products to the general public will enable the general public will enable the general public to intelligently decide which, if any, are liable to endanger the environment. What such a list can and will do, is enable our competitors to learn something about the nature of our products. With competition in the market place as it is today, we certainly do not need the City Council to help our out-of-town competitors.
So that a bill like the Right to Know Bill is not in itself definitive; it would not drive all of these businesses away. It will bear more harshly on some than others, and may expedite their rate of closing or leaving or – and very often it’s not even a question of driving a company away, they just don’t expand here. They go and expand somewhere else.
Related Laws and Rules
Evidence
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Reducing Carcinogens in Public Schools: A non-regulatory approach by a regulatory agency
Using the New Jersey Right to Know law, advocates were able to find 318 public school districts in their state that used or held a list of 10 known carcinogens, including arsenic, benezene, vinyl chloride, and lead chromate. The study documents how these substances are used and who is exposed to them. The authors then show that the schools disposed of the toxics, or used them all up and did not order replacements.
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Fear and Loathing about the Public Right to Know: The Surprising Success of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act
Wolf methodically documents at the Emergency Planning and Community Right-To-Know Act and its effects. He carefully documents industry reaction against the bill, and which of their claims can be supported in retrospect.
Backgrounders & Briefs
Dying To Know: A Historical Analysis of the Right-To-Know Movement
This survey provides a sweeping analysis of the right-to-know movement in America.
