Linking chemical risk assessment and economic analysis has become common practice as a means of supporting decision making for chemical management, safety regulations, laws, and public policy matters. Much more, however, needs to be done to strengthen the links between these 2 seemingly disparate disciplines—one grounded in the natural sciences and the other born from social science.

Chemical risk assessment encompasses the quantification of chemical hazards, exposures, and finally, risks, including the identification of problematic exposure scenarios, risk‐driving chemicals as well as sensitive endpoints, species, and ecosystems. Economic analysis, on the other hand, relies on an understanding of human behavior and predictions of the many possible consequences of chemical exposure, expressed in terms of the benefits and costs of different strategies to avoid or reduce risks. In the end, effectively acting on identified chemical risks often requires a collaboration between different natural scientists and economists, which is largely underdeveloped.

Economics provide chemical risk managers with analytical methods to evaluate different risk‐reduction strategies, including voluntary measures (e.g., eco‐labeling and chemical substitution), command‐and‐control measures (e.g., authorization as a prerequisite for market approval or the outright ban of a chemical), and several market‐based instruments, including the imposition of environmental taxes, fees, tradeable emission permits, subsidies (or the removal of subsidies), and refund schemes.

These strategies are applied in diverse societal and economic systems that have become increasingly complex owing to the globalization of technologies and expanding diversity of cultures evident in most countries. Finding the optimum strategy to act on chemical risks—particularly for substances considered essential to human well‐being—has become the new challenge facing economists. Identifying the best strategy is not only about comparing costs and benefits but also about analyzing the implementation feasibility of different strategies. The latter requires to gauge the level of support gauging the level of support among the general public, regulators, and affected stakeholders relative to the perceived risks. Trying to implement poorly supported strategies does not only risk an increased demand of communication an increased demand of communication with the general public and stakeholders. At worst it also might cause an increased level of noncompliance, with a simultaneously decreasing level of political support.

Resources spent on reducing one particular chemical risk usually cannot be spent on reducing another. Hence, economic cost–benefit analysis helps to optimize the ratio between the efforts required and the achievable benefits of a risk mitigation effort. A benefit–cost ratio larger than 1 is mandatory for passing restrictions under the European Union's Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) and other chemical regulations. However, because environmental effects in most cases are not priced on a market, benefit estimates often include only selected health endpoints, such as cancer or mortality, and typically underestimate the benefits of stricter chemical regulation.

To rectify this, economists have developed various methods to estimate nonmarket values. For example, when using contingent valuation methods, economists ask either for people's willingness to pay to achieve a particular benefit or their willingness to accept a certain loss. A particular weak spot of contingent valuation is the dependency on the highly subjective and malleable risk perceptions of lay people. Its implementation, therefore, requires careful assessment of how chemical risks, which are often far removed from everyday experience, can be communicated in a fair and unbiased manner.

Monetary valuation methods provide a convenient metric for comparing the environmental risks of different chemicals, establishing cost–benefit relationships, and predicting the success of risk reduction measures across jurisdictions and human use patterns. In the environmental area, monetary valuation has found widespread application especially within the concept of ecosystem services, which has evolved in recent years from reliance on a single narrowly focused economic metric that accounts for the supply of a particular material to a broader assessment of ecological value. However, chemical risks are, unfortunately, still underresearched as pressures that drive impacts on ecosystem services.

The biggest challenge facing economists using monetary valuation is the incorporation of traditionally nonmonetized ecological services into the decision‐making process. As Larry Kapustka wrote more than 15y ago, “ascertaining the value of an environmental experience (e.g., observing an osprey capture a trout) versus that of a market‐based commodity (e.g., the price per pound for hatchery trout) remains difficult at best” (Kapustka 2006). It is of paramount importance that cultural perspectives are articulated as values in their own right and that they are not neglected in favor of those goods and services that are easily monetized. Or in other words, monetization is just one of many value measurements. Monetization is also of quite limited use when accounting for impacts on existential global ecosystem services, such as climate regulation. Finally, it is important to acknowledge that biodiversity also has intrinsic value, independent of human perception, which cannot be captured by economic valuation.

The need for collaboration between natural scientists and environmental economists has become paramount. The engagement of analytical chemists, (eco)toxicologists, and risk assessors all too often ends with the provision of hazard, exposure, and risk data, running the risk that the knowledge provided by natural sciences is not fully exploited by policy and decision makers. Among others, the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) seeks to correct this shortcoming through a collaborative research program referred to as “Socio‐economic Analysis of Chemicals by Allowing a Better Quantification and Monetization of Morbidity and Environmental impacts” (SACAME). Contrary to its acronym, the SACAME project aims to lay the groundwork for improving socioeconomic analyses by collecting case studies and encouraging new methods for quantification and monetization of chemical risks (OECD 2021).

Indeed, there are ample opportunities to learn from existing collaborations between natural scientists and social scientists. The ongoing global assessment of impacts caused by global warming (e.g., Dellink et al. 2019) has been a much‐deserved recognition for merging environmental vulnerability and economic impact analyses. The success of the European Union's biodiversity conservation efforts is another example of the importance of highlighting the benefits to both nature and local economies by protecting species diversity in the landscape (EU Commission 2013).

The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals and the zero pollution ambition of the European Union's new chemicals strategy outline broad societal goals that will (hopefully) change and improve the way we use chemicals. In order to make chemical use more sustainable, we need to better understand the interlinkage between consumption patterns, chemical exposures, impacts on human health and biodiversity, and the consequences of different risk reduction measures. This is an incredibly complex task, especially in today's globalized world, which we can accomplish only through intensive interdisciplinary collaboration between natural scientists and social scientists.

将化学风险评估与经济分析联系起来已成为一种常见的实践，可作为支持对化学管理，安全法规，法律和公共政策事项进行决策的一种手段。但是，还需要做更多的工作来加强这两个看似完全不同的学科之间的联系，这两个学科以自然科学为基础，而另一学科则以社会科学为基础。

化学风险评估包括对化学危害，暴露以及最终风险的量化，包括确定有问题的暴露场景，驱动风险的化学物质以及敏感的终点，物种和生态系统。另一方面，经济分析依赖于对人类行为的理解以及对化学暴露可能造成的许多后果的预测，以避免或降低风险的不同策略的收益和成本来表示。最后，要有效地应对已确定的化学风险，通常需要不同的自然科学家和经济学家之间的合作，而这在很大程度上尚不完善。

经济学为化学风险管理者提供了分析方法，以评估不同的降低风险策略，包括自愿措施（例如，生态标签和化学替代品），命令和控制措施（例如，将授权作为市场批准或彻底禁止的前提条件）化学品）和几种基于市场的工具，包括征收环境税，费用，可交易的排放许可，补贴（或取消补贴）和退款计划。

由于技术的全球化和大多数国家明显的文化多样性的扩展，这些策略已被应用到各种社会和经济系统中，这些系统已经变得越来越复杂。寻找最佳方法来应对化学风险，尤其是对于那些被认为对人类福祉至关重要的物质，已成为经济学家面临的新挑战。确定最佳策略不仅涉及比较成本和收益，而且还涉及分析不同策略的实施可行性。后者需要评估支持水平，以衡量公众，监管机构和受影响的利益相关者相对于感知风险的支持水平。尝试执行支持不力的策略不仅会带来沟通需求增加的风险，而且还会增加与公众和利益相关者沟通的需求。在最坏的情况下，这也可能会导致违规行为增加，同时政治支持水平也会下降。

用于减少一种特定化学风险的资源通常不能用于减少另一种化学风险。因此，经济成本效益分析有助于优化所需的努力与减轻风险的努力可实现的收益之间的比率。为了通过欧盟《化学品注册，评估，授权和限制》（REACH）和其他化学品法规中的限制，必须强制要求效益成本比大于1。但是，由于在大多数情况下对环境的影响不在市场上定价，因此收益估算通常仅包括选定的健康终点，例如癌症或死亡率，并且通常低估了更严格的化学法规的收益。

为了纠正这一点，经济学家开发了各种方法来估计非市场价值。例如，当使用或有估值方法时，经济学家会要求人们为实现特定利益而付出的意愿或为接受特定损失而付出的意愿。或有估值的一个特别弱点是依赖于非专业人士的高度主观和可延展的风险感知。因此，其实施需要仔细评估如何以一种公平，公正的方式来传达通常与日常经验相去甚远的化学风险。

货币估值方法为比较不同化学品的环境风险，建立成本－收益关系以及预测跨辖区和人类使用模式的降低风险措施的成功提供了方便的度量标准。在环境领域，货币估值已得到广泛应用，尤其是在生态系统服务的概念中。近年来，货币估值已从依赖单一的，关注特定材料供应的狭economic经济指标发展为对生态价值的更广泛评估。然而，不幸的是，化学风险仍然是研究不足的压力，因为这些压力会影响生态系统服务。

使用货币估值的经济学家面临的最大挑战是将传统上非货币化的生态服务纳入决策过程。正如拉里·卡普斯塔卡（Larry Kapustka）在15年前写的那样，“相对于以市场为基础的商品（例如，孵化鳟鱼的每磅价格），要确定环境经验（例如，观察鱼鹰捕获的鳟鱼）的价值仍然很难。 ”（Kapustka  2006）。至关重要的是，将文化观点本身说成是价值观，并且不应忽视那些容易获利的商品和服务。换句话说，货币化只是众多价值衡量指标之一。当考虑到对气候变化等现有全球生态系统服务的影响时，货币化的用途也非常有限。最后，重要的是要承认生物多样性也具有内在价值，而与人类的感知无关，这是无法通过经济价值来体现的。

自然科学家和环境经济学家之间合作的需求已变得至关重要。分析化学家，（生态）毒理学家和风险评估师的参与往往以提供危害，暴露和风险数据为结尾，这冒着政策和决策者没有充分利用自然科学知识的风险。除其他外，经济合作与发展组织（OECD）试图通过一项名为“通过对发病率和环境影响进行更好的量化和货币化对化学品进行社会经济分析”的合作研究计划来纠正这一缺陷（SACAME ）。与它的首字母缩写相反， 2021年）。

确实，有很多机会可以从自然科学家和社会科学家之间的现有合作中学习。正在进行的全球变暖造成的影响的全球评估（例如，Dellink等人，  2019年）对于合并环境脆弱性和经济影响分析而言，是当之无愧的认可。欧盟生物多样性保护工作的成功是通过保护景观中物种的多样性来突出自然和当地经济的利益的另一个重要例子（欧盟委员会，  2013年）。

联合国的可持续发展目标和欧盟新化学品战略的零污染野心概述了广泛的社会目标，这些目标将（希望）改变并改善我们使用化学品的方式。为了使化学品的使用更具可持续性，我们需要更好地了解消费方式，化学品暴露，对人类健康和生物多样性的影响以及不同的降低风险措施的后果之间的相互联系。这是一项极其复杂的任务，尤其是在当今全球化的世界中，只有通过自然科学家和社会科学家之间的深入跨学科合作，我们才能完成这一任务。