JUNIPER PUBLISHERS- Open Access Journal of Toxicology (OAJT) Author: Henk A Tennekes Introduction Historian Heiko Stoff has recently sketched a fascinating controversy in the 1950's on chemical risk assessment [ 1 ]. Two renowned scientists in the Farbstoffkommission (Dye Committee) of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Community), pharmacologist Hermann Druckrey and biochemist (and Nobel Prize winner) Adolf Butenandt, were advocates of a preventive risk approach. This approach was largely determined by a groundbreaking study conducted by Druckrey during the war years with the carcinogenic dye 4-dimethylaminoazobenzene (also known as "butter yellow") [ 2 ], and Druckrey's un-intentional cooperation with the electrophysicist Karl Küpfmüller in an American detention camp in Hammelburg, Bavaria [ 3 ]. The History of the Druckrey-Küpfmüller Equation Druckrey demonstrated in 1943 that the carcin...