A comprehensive review on the application of socio-economic analyses in chemical management: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

Socio-economic analyses (SEA), as an established method to evaluate the costs and benefits of actions, has been used to make chemical risk management plans and international compliance decisions. The exiting SEA has made significant progress in the impact assessment of chemical management, yet the key insights and challenges of costs and benefits evaluation has not been comprehensively summarized. This paper conducts a narrative review of recent SEA studies from developing countries and developed regions, focusing on the field of chemicals management. This review has explored the steps and methods of SEA in chemicals management and summarized the major challenges of SEA in terms of data availability, diversity of health endpoints, and interdisciplinary integration. The results showed that SEAs for chemicals management have been widely documented. However, there are still many challenges, especially the results of risk assessment are difficult to provide useful input for SEA. In addition, most SEAs do not consider the non-fatal health consequences of chemical exposure, and the selected health endpoints only include cancer or mortality. Due to the lack of dose-response relationship between chemical pollution concentration and ecosystem impact, it is difficult to quantify environmental benefits. Finally, it is strongly recommended to break the "communication barriers" between scholars in different fields by setting up research funds and projects.