Abstract
This paper addresses constraints on and opportunities for the use of social science knowledge about environmental stressors in the making of public policy. It first identifies groups for which knowledge about stressors can be useful, including various levels of government and the branches within those levels. Then a spectrum of types of use of knowledge is set out. Constraints on use noted include the differences in the agendas of the social science research and policy communities, the legal and philosophical limitations on a research directed public policy and the differences in the two communities relating to the nature of inquiry. In the final sections, conditions that point to the increased usefulness of stressor research are identified and opportunities for increasing the links between the policy and research enterprises are described.

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