Cite as: 521 U. S. 424 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
event. Cf. 29 CFR § 1910.1001(l) (1996) (requiring employers to provide medical monitoring for workers exposed to asbestos). The Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulations (which the dissent cites) help to demonstrate why the Second Circuit erred: where state and federal regulations already provide the relief that a plaintiff seeks, creating a full-blown tort remedy could entail systemic costs without corresponding benefits. Nor could an employer necessarily protect itself by offering monitoring, see post, at 453-454, for that is not part of the rule of law that Justice Ginsburg would endorse—a rule that, if traditional, would, as we have noted, allow recovery irrespective of the presence of a "collateral source" of payment. See post, at 449.
We do not deny important competing considerations—of a kind that may have led some courts to provide a form of liability. Buckley argues, for example, that it is inequitable to place the economic burden of such care on the negligently exposed plaintiff rather than on the negligent defendant. See, e. g., Ayers, 106 N. J., at 603-606, 525 A. 2d, at 311-312; Potter, 6 Cal. 4th, at 1007-1009, 863 P. 2d, at 824. He points out that providing preventive care to individuals who would otherwise go without can help to mitigate potentially serious future health effects of diseases by detecting them in early stages; again, whether or not this is such a situation, we may assume that such situations occur. And he adds that, despite scientific uncertainties, the difficulty of separating justified from unjustified claims may be less serious than where emotional distress is the harm at issue. See also Ayers, supra; Potter, supra.
We do not deny that Justice Ginsburg paints a sympathetic picture of Buckley and his co-workers; this picture has force because Buckley is sympathetic and he has suffered wrong at the hands of a negligent employer. But we are more troubled than is Justice Ginsburg by the potential systemic effects of creating a new, full-blown, tort law cause of action—for example, the effects upon interests of other
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